In the wake of the country’s dwindling oil revenue, the Federal Government of Nigeria says it will have no choice but to take back idle oil wells from operators.
It also threatened to revoke the licenses of those that have yet to commence oil exploration.
Minister of State for Petroleum Resources (Oil), Heineken Lokpobiri, disclosed these at an event held in Lagos recently.
According to the minister, Nigerian has lost around $30bn due to low oil output in the past 30 months and that the country was losing almost 500,000 barrels of oil per day because of the furore between two major oil players.
“The ‘Big Boys’ are holding on to these licences as souvenirs, they are not doing anything about them. That is why we are farming them out. We will not allow any company to do that. Let’s start to do things differently,” he noted.
The Minister said he was keen about changing how things were done. To him “the worst thing that will happen to Nigeria is for our refinery to be fully rehabilitated and we will have to import crude from another country. That’s why I’m here to engage you that together, let’s change this story.
Western Campaign Against Fossil Hypocritical
He described as hypocritical, the West’s campaign against fossil fuel stating that “America is doing 40mbpd yet they want Africa to stop oil production. Nobody wants to stop fossil fuel production, but they want Africa to stop it. Don’t worry about this campaign, fossil fuel will not go away.”
The former Senator said he was hopeful that the nation could locally produce its daily energy requirements saying, “I am looking for a situation where we will complete our refineries in Port Harcourt, in Warri, in Kaduna, with the Dangote Refinery coming up, with the couple of modular refineries that we have given licences (and I am ready to give more), so that we can produce what we need to consume, not only in Nigeria but the entire West African sub-region.
African Energy Bank
On the proposed African Energy Bank, he said the Federal Government would endeavour to have it sited in Nigeria.
“For the African Energy Bank, we are running with Ghana. It is now between Nigeria and Ghana on which of them will be able to get the headquarters of the African Energy Bank. The African Energy Bank starts with $5bn, if we have it in Nigeria, in four to five years, it will grow to About $120bn. Imagine what that will do to the GDP of our economy. We must try our best to ensure we get the headquarters of the African Energy Bank to Nigeria,” he remarked.