The Group Managing Director, Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, Dr. Maikanti Baru, has said that cross-nation collaboration among oil producing countries in Africa is essential to convert the challenges in the oil and gas sectors.
This, he said, was in order to take advantage of the sector’s potential for the economic growth of the continent.
Baru said collaboration in the area of legal and regulatory framework would enhance the abundant opportunities inherent in the new oil and gas discoveries across many countries in Africa, stating that huge opportunities in the African oil and gas industry would not be fully tapped if African countries failed to address critical issues of lack of infrastructure, legal and regulatory impediments, and transparency issues.
Citing the proposed Nigeria-Morocco Gas Pipeline as an example of the type of infrastructural collaboration needed, he disclosed that the project would traverse at least 15 West-African countries with intake and off-take points in the various countries “before it links with the existing Maghreb-Europe Gas Pipeline in northern Morocco.”
“The feasibility study has been concluded and the pre-Front End Engineering Design optimisation study is currently ongoing. While this pipeline will help in electrification and industrialisation of these countries, it will also meet the needs of European consumers for heating,” Baru added.
He described NIPS as a veritable platform to help galvanise Africa’s response to global oil and gas challenges, stressing that it was the melting pot to meet, discuss and share ideas on how to move, not just the Nigerian oil and gas industry, but also the economies of the various countries in the continent forward.
He said NNPC shared in his vision for NIPS to be the premier African Petroleum Technology and Business Conference and the largest gathering of oil and gas professionals in the continent.
