NNPCL advocates “War Room” to tackle challenges faced by independent producers

The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) has called for a stronger partnership among upstream operators, especially independent producers, to find solutions to the challenges in the effective development of divested assets in the nation’s oil and gas industry.

Specifically, the company advocated a ‘war room’ where issues are raised and concrete plans are made to resolve them rather than waiting for stakeholders individually to take them on.

The Executive Vice President, Upstream, NNPCL, Mrs. Oritsemeyiwa Eyesan, made the call at a panel session in the ongoing 2024 Nigerian International Energy Summit (NIES 2024) in Abuja.

Speaking on the theme “Innovation, Collaboration, and Resilience: Empowering Independent Producers in the Dynamic Energy Era,” Eyesan recalled that past experiences with divestments and how the assets were operated had left much to be desired, as most of them experienced a drop in production rather than growth.

“In the industry, if you want to measure success, there are some basic indicators that you utilise: production growth, reserve growth, and asset integrity.

“If I were to evaluate prior investment initiatives and scale the actors using these indices, I would be untrue to myself if I said everybody had done well.

“Yes, we acquired the assets, but today we are worse off in terms of production than we were when we did the acquisition,” Eyesan said in a statement emailed to Persecondnews by Mr. Femi Soneye, the Chief Corporate Communications Officer of NNPCL.

She, however, acknowledged that there were some success stories in the operations of the independent producers.

She identified some of the challenges as including insecurity, lack of finance, and lack of technological capacity, stressing that with collaboration among industry players, the challenges could be surmounted.

“Collaboration cannot be overemphasized. Somebody said we should be in a state of emergency, and I totally agree with that. It’s not by sitting here and talking about the challenges.

“I think we should have a ‘war room’ where we raise the issues and set out concrete plans to resolve them rather than wait for stakeholders individually to take them on. We need collaboration, collaboration, and collaboration,” the Executive Vice President, Upstream, also said.

The panel session had key players in the sector, such as the Chief Executive Officer of Aradel Holdings, Mr. Adegbite Falade; the Managing Director of SNEPCo, Mrs. Elohor Aiboni; the Managing Director of First E & P Development Company, Mr. Demola Adeyemi-Bero; and the Chief Executive Officer of TotalEnergies, Mr. Matthieu Bouyer.

Others were the Chief Executive Officer, ExxonMobil Nigeria, Mr. Shane Harris; the Chief Operating Officer, Oando Energy Resources, Dr. Ainojie Alex Irune; and the Director, Joint Venture, Chevron Nigeria, Mr. Cosmas Iwueze.