Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Chief Timipre Sylva, has assured of his commitment to implementing all policies that would make the oil and gas industry grow and attractive to investors.
The minister said he would continue with the implementation of the government’s approved oil industry roadmap, otherwise referred to as the ‘7 Big Wins.’
He noted that implementation of the roadmap would immensely address the much needed reduction of cost of production of crude oil per barrel and elimination of security challenges as well as oil and gas infrastructure vandalism.
It will also enhance Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) penetration nationwide and improve the integrity of measuring equipment at terminals.
The minister spoke during his visit to the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR), in Lagos, as part of his familiarisation tour of parastatals under his ministry.
He emphasised the Federal Government’s commitment to revamping the sector. In 2016, President Muhammadu Buhari unveiled the oil and gas industry roadmap tagged “7 Big Wins’, which has the potential to address the challenges retarding growth of the oil and gas sector.
READ ALSO: Why we’re running a welfarist govt in Oyo – Gov. Makinde
“We are unrelenting in our commitment to reform, retool and refocus policy-making, regulatory and revenue-yielding parastatals and agencies under the Ministry of Petroleum Resources to operate optimally for the benefit of the national economy which has been experiencing some distress since the drastic fall in oil prices,” the minister said.
The visit, which was his first to any parastatal since his assumption of office, provided a platform for the minister to outline his vision for the petroleum industry.
He commended the acting Director of DPR, Mr. Ahmad Shakur, for the excellent facilities and infrastructure put in place to domicile components of the industry operations, such as the National Data Repository (NDR), which is the data hub for the entire oil and gas industry in Nigeria and the National Production Monitoring System (NPMS), which has been upgraded to monitor crude oil, liquefied natural gas (LNG) and petroleum products vessels into and outside the country on real-time basis.
Shakur, who received the Minister, assured him of DPR’s commitment to the realisation and implementation of his vision for the industry, adding that the DPR was developing a robust policy framework to align with his vision.
The DPR chief presented the NPMS monitoring tool to the minister to enable him monitor real-time crude oil exports and petroleum products importation.