Jeff Ewing, chairman/managing director, Chevron Nigeria Limited has called for collaboration by all stakeholders for the achievement of sustained investment and growth in the oil and gas industry in Nigeria.
Jeff, who made the call while contributing to the panel discussion on “Unlocking Nigeria’s Investment Potential,” at the Nigerian Oil and Gas (NOG) conference in Abuja on Wednesday noted that the current relative stability in the global oil markets presents an opportunity for both the industry operators and the government to appraise the industry and provide enduring solutions.
He said the industry has an opportunity in rejuvenating old frontier basin exploration, to discover impact resource additions for strategic reserves replacement and growth and opportunities to continue to enhance efficiency and reduce cost.
While stressing the expected government’s focus on creating an enabling environment for investment to thrive and developing new oil and gas fiscal policy that are globally competitive, he applauded the efforts of the government and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation in addressing the issue of Joint Venture cash call arrears.
The Chevron MD also mentioned some steps to ensure growth of the Nigerian gas sector which include efforts in driving initiatives in effective utilization of the nation’s abundant gas for achieving the goal of energy security, and enacting fiscal terms that encourage the development of small to mid-sized assets/reservoirs as well as non-associated gas fields.
Other measures to advance the gas sector, according to him, include the establishment of a competitive Deepwater gas fiscal framework, the commitment to supporting and enabling ‘willing buyer – willing seller’ gas pricing model, and the development of strategy for legacy payments for gas sold to the domestic power market.
He informed that CNL continues to sustain efforts towards delivering exploration and production projects and activities as well as making significant investments in gas projects, and some of the accomplishments include the $1.2 billion-dollar gas and condensate project scope that include drilling, major rig workovers and associated facilities as well as ongoing offshore and onshore drilling campaigns.
Jeff emphasized CNL’s efforts in playing a lead role in growing supply of high quality domestic gas and monetizing liquid rich gas reserves; the reduction of routine flaring by over 90 per cent in the past 10 years as well as the significant successes in Nigerian content development.
Chevron contributes 41 per cent of the total domestic gas supply in Nigeria, according to DPR statistics.