The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Chief Timipre Sylva, said the federal government is working to reduce its equity stake in Joint Venture (JV) participation to 40 per cent.
Sylva enumerated his Ministry’s deliverable on which the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and other departments and agencies under his watch should take a cue.
The Minister who said this at the commencement of a two-day Next Level Strategic retreat for Directors of the Ministry of Petroleum Resources and Heads of Agencies in the ministry listed other priority areas of the government to include; curbing petroleum products cross border leakages, completion of gas flare commercialisation, increasing crude oil production to 3 million barrels per day and effecting reduction in cost of crude oil production by at least 5 per cent.
According to a release on Friday in Abuja, by NNPC Group General Manager, Group Public Affairs Division, Mr. Ndu Ughamadu, other priority areas the minister would be focusing on nclude: Aggressive promotion of passage of the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB); Promotion of inland basin exploration activities; Promotion of deep offshore exploration activities; Collaboration with private sector to aggressively increase domestic refining capacity and Working assiduously to support Mr. President in his poise to achieving his target of raising millions of Nigerians out of poverty via job creation.
The minister told heads of the agencies that at end of the retreat they would be required to collectively sign an undertaking to deliver on the set tasks and targets, saying they “must execute the mandate with all the seriousness it deserves.”
In his response, the Group Managing Director of the NNPC, Mallam Mele Kyari, expressed the Corporation’s readiness to align with the spirit and letter behind the key priorities areas, stressing that as the main enabler of the Nigerian economy, NNPC would work with other agencies of the Ministry to make the outlined aspirations a dream come true.
He noted that the coming of Chief Sylva as the HMSPR promised to engender high level Inter agencies-collaboration across all tiers of the sector.
Similar sentiments were echoed by heads of Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB), Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF), the Department of Petroleum Resource (DPR), and Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) among others.
