- Safiu Kehinde
The Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited has called on foreign investors to direct their attention to Nigeria and tap into the huge opportunities in the nation’s energy sector.
Bashir Bayo Ojulari, the NNPC’s Group Chief Executive Officer, made the call while fielding questions from NBC’s Hala Gorani during the Energy Talk segment of the 2025 Gastech Exhibition & Conference, currently taking place in Milan, Italy.
As contained in a statement issued by the company’s Chief Corporate Communications Officer, Andy Odeh, NNPC boss maintained that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has improved Nigeria’s investment climate and positioned the country as the preferred investment destination for the energy sector in Africa.
Ojulari stressed that the new NNPC Ltd. management is also keen on attaining its set targets towards delivering value to its shareholders.
He noted that a number of investors were already coming into the country with gas-based industries such as petrochemicals and methanol plants.
However, the NNPC GCEO said more investments were required to build infrastructure to support the Federal Government’s aspiration to power the nation’s transportation sector with Compressed Natural Gas (CNG).
Ojulari further explained that apart from gas, the existing crude oil assets have huge untapped reservoirs for investors to tap into towards boosting production from the current 1.7million barrels per day, besides over 200 oil fields that are currently undeveloped.
On measures being taken to make Nigeria an investors’ haven, the GCEO said NNPC Ltd. was investing heavily in carbon capture projects as well as technology to enhance energy efficiency and reduce gas flaring in compliance with the objectives of financing partners.
He said that a number of critical gas infrastructure projects in the country, such as the Ajaokuta-Kaduna-Kano (AKK) Gas pipeline, are in their advanced stages, while the NLNG Train 7 Project is also being progressed.
Nigeria’s energy transition strategy is, according to him, focused on eradicating energy poverty which requires enormous investments in gas as the fuel of choice for industrialisation as well as Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) as domestic cooking gas for the over six million Africans who lack access to clean energy.