(Quick News Africa)- Nigeria’s crude oil production has reached 2.2 million barrels per day, Maikanti Baru, group managing director (GMD) of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), said on Wednesday.
Baru, who was speaking at the 6th Sustainability in the Extractive Industries (SITEI) conference in Abuja, also said the target is to build up the country’s oil reserve to about 2.5 million barrels per day.
The GMD, who was represented by Mohammed Saidu, NNPC’s chief operating officer, oil and power, attributed the increase in production to the peace in the Niger Delta.
He further explained that NNPC’s subsidiary, the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company (NPDC), has already transformed from 15,000 mbd production to about 210,000 mbd.
According to him, the corporation had identified seven critical gas projects in order to enhance power supply and stimulate industrial growth.
Baru maintained that “current production is building up, we are doing about 2.2 million barrels per day today, but of course, the intension is to build on that, sustain production and grow it up to about three million barrels per day in the next few years.
“We have to grow the reserves. We have had little or zero exploration for the past years, but thank God we are now renewing that. With the calmness in the Niger Delta and some of the efforts in the north-eastern region, we have now renewed our vigor towards building the reserves,’ he said.
Baru also stated that the corporation had reclaimed the three main pipelines that supply crude oil to the refineries and that the product lines had also been reclaimed.
He added that “for the first time in the last five years we have been pumping products from Kaduna to Kano and this is in effort to reclaim the inland distribution and storage capacity that the NNPC has built over the years.
