Uche Usim, Abuja
Efforts to tackle trans-border smuggling of petroleum products crystallized on Thursday as the Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Mallam Mele Kyari, partnered the Department of State Services (DSS) to help tackle the menace which recently attained a frightening dimension.
According to the national oil company, the partnership will also smoothen operations of the oil and gas industry.
Leading the top-level NNPC management team to the service Headquarters in Abuja on a courtesy visit on Thursday, Kyari, lamented the negative impacts of the activities of smugglers and related ills on the nation’s economy.
He said the intolerable implication of the reign of smuggling syndicates was that Nigeria is the unintended supplier of petroleum products to the entire west coast of Africa and beyond.
The NNPC GMD listed other areas for immediate intervention to include: oil pipeline vandalism which has led to significant losses in revenue, protection of NNPC workforce and equipment in the course of operation in the frontier exploration fields.
Kyari stated that the assistance being sought from DSS would go a long way to guaranteeing a veritable national energy security in line with the aspiration of the Service to the government and people of Nigeria.
He noted that the attainment of the aforementioned goals would not only be helpful to NNPC’s operations but would ultimately impact on the generality of the populace since NNPC is the biggest enabler of the Nigeria economy.
The NNPC GMD acknowledged the long history of inter-agency collaboration between the corporation and the DSS, noting that the long alliance between both Federal government-owned agencies can only be enhanced to ensure that the corporation is placed at a vantage position to grow production and crude reserve in such a way as to ensure funding for the country.
Welcoming the top-level NNPC team to the DSS HQ, Bichi, while also echoing the long history of collaboration between both establishments, assured the NNPC team of round-the-clock support.
He said the agency, in line with its statutory responsibility, would provide maximum collaboration to help NNPC succeed.
In another development, the NNPC expressed its determination to aggressively grow domestic gas utilization in-country to 5billion cubic feet of gas per day from its current 1.7billion cubic feet of gas per day by 2022.
Chief Operating Officer, Gas and Power, Engr. Yusuf Usman, made this known while delivering a paper entitled: “Strategies for Ensuring Infrastructural Growth for a Robust Gas Industry and Utilization” at the Nigeria International Pipeline Technology and Security Conference in Abuja on Thursday.
Usman explained that domestic gas demand was expected to grow to 7.4billion cubic feet of gas per day by 2027.
“Based on all current known domestic gas supply projects, domestic gas supply is forecast to close the demand by 2021 as we have identified Seven Critical Gas Development Projects (7CGDP) currently being fast-tracked to bridge the foreseen supply gap by 2021,” Engr. Yusuf submitted.
Engr. Usman stated that the completion of the three major domestic gas transmission systems would add 6.8billion cubic feet of gas per day capacity, saying that the 36- inch Escravos to Lagos Pipelines (ELPS) 1 and 2 with 2.2billion cubic feet per day capacity would be completed in the fourth quarter of this year.
He said the ongoing East to West connection via the 48-inch Obiafu Obrikom to Oben pipeline (OB3) with 2.4 billion cubic feet per day capacity would be completed in the first quarter of 2020, affirming also that the 40-inch Ajaokuta to Abuja to Kaduna to Kano (AKK) gas pipeline with 2.2billion cubic feet per day.