Abuja, Nigeria | – The Nigerian Petroleum Development Company (NPDC), a subsidiary of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) targets to raise its crude oil generating capacity from the 70,000 barrels per day recorded about few years to 250,000 barrels per day by 2020.
The Group Managing Director of NNPC, Andrew Yakubu, made this revelation at a capacity building workshop in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State and further disclosed that the NPDC witnessed improvement in its performance in the last two years.
Yakubu stated that NPDC has become the fifth largest producer of oil and gas in Nigeria and the largest supplier of gas to the domestic market.
He said the NNPC has evaluated the oil and gas sector and set out strategies to improve oil and gas production in the country in line with the government’s aspiration to transform the oil and gas industry, especially the NNPC into an integrated oil and gas company.
“On the average today, we are able to maintain 2.5 million barrels per day production, although we had serious challenges of crude oil theft and bunkering from our major trunklines and these trunklines are mainly in the East, West and centre of the country,” he said.
Yakubu identified the pipelines that were severely affected to include the Trans Niger Trunkline that takes crude oil to Bonny Island export terminal and the Nembe Creek Trunkline that also takes crude to the Bonny terminal.
These trunklines have a capacity of 300,000 barrels per day. He also noted that the Temidaba-Brass pipeline that take about 100,000 barrels of crude oil per day to the Brass terminal in Bayelsa State, as well as the Trans Forcados Trunkline that take crude oil to the Forcados terminal in the western Niger Delta were also heavily affected by vandalism.
