NUPRC challenges oil operators on energy transition

The Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) said the global momentum and impact of the energy transition have made it mandatory for players in the oil and gas sector bring in innovative measures to mitigate the effect of energy transition.

The NUPRC Chief Executive, Gbenga Komolafe, disclosed this in a statement on Friday.

The statement said Mr Komolafe made the statement while speaking at the Energy Year Nigeria 2023 Book Launch and Awards Ceremony in Lagos.

“There must be a concerted effort to drive African market integration with a population of about 1.46 million consumers which comparatively is larger compared to the combined population of America and Europe put at about 1.1 million consumers. Such a large market must be annexed.

“We can also optimize the value chain of our crude oil by developing our domestic refining capacity with multiplying effect on the midstream derivatives such as the petrochemical industry, methanol, ammonia production and LPG that will spur the industrialisation base and improve revenue for economic development,” Mr Komolafe said.

He said Africa’s industrialisation capacity is weak purely due to the energy gap and low midstream derivatives and feedstock for industrial development.

“An economy with low industrialisation is a weak economy,” he added.

Therefore, he said an innovative approach for funding fossil fuel development in the Nigerian upstream has become more compelling now than ever as a mitigation measure against the onslaught of the energy transition.

“Alternative funding mechanisms must be sought and pursued vigorously to assuage the effect of defunding fossil fuel. Such mechanisms could include pre-export financing, project financing, oil for service agreements and prioritisation of gas development being the adopted transition fuel,” he said.

“Others include continuous data gathering and studies to optimize discovery requirements to be pursued to reduce the chances of failure and downtime during drilling.”

He explained that the adoption of advanced technologies is crucial in transforming the upstream sector, improving production and delivering benefits to the government and investors.

“As the world is fast gravitating towards digitization and automation in all spheres of human endeavours, we must not be left behind.

“Embracing technologies like Artificial Intelligence, big data analytics and the Internet of things, will revolutionise our operations, enhance safety, and optimize resource utilisation,” he said.

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Mr Komolafe said the NUPRC, has continued to be innovative and has demonstrated commitment to digitisation and automation of all its operational and regulatory processes in line with its core values of professionalism, responsiveness, ownership and integrity to reduce inefficiencies and optimising processing time cycle in its operations.

“To this end, we have embarked on the optimisation of the Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW) to improve our workflow processes; the Revenue Ledger and Information System (RLIS) portal for companies to submit all local and foreign royalty payments; the National Balance of Payment portal for reporting inward and outward direct investment associated with crude oil export; Asset Management Web Portal (AMWP) for Marginal Fields and petroleum facilities, and many others that are intended to improve delivery on our mandate as provided in the PIA, 2023.

“Accordingly, we are embracing and adopting new technologies and advanced recovery techniques to unlock some identified stranded or bypassed oil and gas resources to increase our reserves and ramp up production. We have commenced the use of smart completion to enable commingling of production from different reservoirs to increase production,” he said.