By Omotilewa Quadri
The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Ibe Kachikwu, has sad that Nigeria is expecting investments up to $40 billion in oil projects over the next five years.
The minister said this at the inaugural edition of the Nigeria International Petroleum Summit (NIPS) on Monday.
He said the federal government’s vision is to have Nigeria refine most of its crude locally, adding that Nigeria is targeting raising domestic refining capacity from 14% to 90% within 20 months.
“My target is that over the next 10 years, Nigeria would produce an FPSO and that is not too much to ask,” he said.
“And over the same period, Nigeria would gravitate from crude oil, as it were, to very refined, clean provision of fossils.
“My target is that over that same period, investment in the sector, in the sense that Nigerian companies, Nigerian entities and Nigerian shareholders, would begin to move from the minuscule 10 percent today to between 40 and 50 percent of local investments.
“There are major plans, everywhere you look, there are opportunities in the oil sector. What have we achieved since the launch of the 7Big wins two years ago? We have been able to, through a lot of struggle, change the funding capacity for the upstream, and that had sort of energised investors in the upstream sector.
“Now we are beginning to see projects like Egina, $15 billion; Zabazaba, potential $10 billion; Bonga, potential $10 billion, and the likes…put at over $40 billion potential investments over the next five years if we do the right thing, set the right models and set the right policies.
“We have addressed refineries, for the first time, we are creating a model where target investments are going into the dilapidated refineries.
“We are still targeting to be able to get these refineries up and running from about 14 percent utilisation capacityself-sufficiency 90 to 95 percent over the next 18 to 20 months.
“If we do that, hopefully, we would begin to move drastically to self-sufficiency in the production of refined petroleum products.”
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