Nigeria To Reduce Government Shares In Oil JVs

Nigeria has announced plans to reduce the Federal Government’s equity stakes in Joint Venture (JV) participation to 40 percent.

Presently government stake in most JVs are 51percent or 49percent, while it’s partners share the rest.

Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Mr Timipre Sylva, disclosed this plan, Friday in Lagos, while enumerating his Ministry’s deliverables.

In a presentation at the commencement of a two-day Strategic retreat for Directors of the Ministry and Heads of Agencies under his purview, Sylva listed other priority areas to include curbing petroleum products cross border leakages, completion of gas flare commercialisation, increasing crude oil production to 3million barrels per day and effecting reduction in cost of crude oil production by at least 5 percent.

Other priority areas itemised include aggressive promotion of passage of the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB), promotion of inland basin exploration activities, promotion of deep offshore exploration activities and collaboration with private sector to aggressively increase domestic refining capacity.

e360 learnt that heads of agencies are at end of the retreat required to collectively sign an undertaking to deliver on the set tasks and targets, with a resolve to execute the mandate with all seriousness.

In his response, the Group Managing Director of the NNPC, Mr Mele Kyari, expressed the readiness of the NNPC to align the corporation with the spirit and letter behind the key priorities areas.

Kyari stressed that as the main enabler of the Nigerian economy, NNPC would work with other agencies of the Ministry to realise the outlined aspirations.

Also present at the meeting were the heads of the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB), Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF), Department of Petroleum Resource (DPR), and Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) among others.