We need oil money to diversify Nigeria’s economy – Elumelu

The Chairman of Heirs Energies, Tony Elumelu has stated that Nigeria must scale oil production to generate revenue for economic diversification to non-oil sectors.

Speaking at the Heirs Energies leadership forum over the weekend in Abuja, Elumelu emphasised the need for massive investment in oil and gas to power the country’s industries and ensure energy security.

“We cannot industrialise Africa, Nigeria, without improving access to energy and electricity in particular that’s why Heirs Energies was founded because energy investment is critical—it is what we need. We acquired OML 17 from Shell about four or five years ago.

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Today, we produce over 53,000 barrels of oil daily, and we are one of the leading indigenous oil and gas producers in Nigeria.” he said

Elumelu said under former President Muhammadu Buhari, Nigeria’s oil output dropped to less than 1 million barrels per day (bpd).

However, he said, “We are happy that under the current Tinubu administration, in general, we produce 1.8 million barrels of oil a day. But we are not satisfied with that figure

“We want to take it to over 2 million. We know that we need oil money to diversify Nigeria away from oil. And we need to have the money to help develop our country.

“Our goal is to increase gas production in Nigeria as we increase oil production. Gas will help industries to produce and enable power companies like Transcorp to generate more electricity.”

Speaking on his company’s production plans, Elumelu disclosed that Heirs Energies is expanding its oil output capacity to reach 100,000 bpd in the coming years.

Also speaking, the NUPRC Chief Executive, Gbenga Komolafe, said the rallying of industry stakeholders to launch the Project 1 million barrels additional production in October 2024 had started bearing fruits.

According to him, as of the period the programme was launched, the country was operating at about 1.5 million barrels of production per day.

Speaking further, he said, “Between then and now, the industry has been able to add an additional 250,000 barrels incremental. And that is quite significant. So for now, we are operating at about 1.75 million barrels per day.

“But going forward, the commission has a line of sight on how to get to our target production of 2.5 million barrels per day. And in doing that, we have identified the key initiatives to actually achieve that target. We’ve identified the candidate wells that need to be reactivated, that need to be re-entered”, he stated.