…Says last one year very successful
The Minister of State Petroleum, Timipre Sylva gave a resounding thumb up to all the CEOs of agencies under the Ministry of Petroleum Resources.
The Minister gave the commendation yesterday during the maiden quarterly meeting with the heads of the agencies under the Ministry; where performances are reviewed in relation to the mandate of the ministry. Among the agencies that made presentation at the meeting were the GMD NNPC Mr. Mele Kyari, Director DPR Engr. Auwalu Sarki, Executive Secretaries of NCDMB Engr. Simbi Wabote and PEF Alhaji Bobboi respectively. Others were Principal of the PTI and the ES of the PPPRA.
Earlier in his opening remarks, Mr. Sylva confirmed that the ministry had met most of the key items of the eight Priority Areas of the Ministry’s Mandate. Among the successes recorded were passage of the Deep Offshore and Inland Basin Production Sharing Contract (Amendment) Act; Significant reduction of cross border smuggling of petroleum products; Reduction of the cost of crude oil extraction by at least 5% as targeted; and an impressive increase in production level to within the target of 3MB, but which had to be deliberately slowed down due to OPEC curtailment.
In his presentation the NNPC GMD Mr. Mele Kyari, along with other agency heads identified the signing of FID of Train-7, the take-off the AKK Pipeline, reducing production cost of production by the 5% target ongoing digitization of the entire operations of the Ministry, launching of the Gas Transportation Network Code and the soon-to-be-rolled out National Gas Expansion Programme (NGEP) as among some of the major achievements of the Ministry accomplished in just one year of Mr. Sylva’s assumption of office as HMSPR.
The Minister also mentioned that he was particularly pleased with the agency heads as they all are working and cooperating with one another toward achieving the objectives of the Ministry. He said it was the collective effort of all that has made it possible for President Muhammadu Buhari government to take the bold decision of deregulating the downstream sector of the nation’s oil and gas operation; a feat which he noted previous regimes had found impossible to attain.