Cote d’Ivoire prime minister is poised to increase its crude oil and gas production after a decade of turmoil. The country would boost oil production within five years to 200,000 barrels per day, rivaling neighbouring Ghana. If this ambition must be realised, the state-owned national oil company Petroci, which controls the upstream oil industry, no doubt has a significant role to play.
Daniel Gnangni, the man at the helm of affairs in Pet¬roci, must rise to the challenge of attracting investments to the country to ramp up exploration and production projects.
“In terms of the upstream oil sector, that is exploration and production, our priori¬ties are focused on increasing national production in the short term to reach at least 200,000 barrels of oil per day and 300 million cubic feet of natural gas per day,” Gnangni had recently affirmed in an interview.
He also stressed the need to promote the nation’s largely unexplored sedimentary basin in a more sustained manner to attract increasingly more investors to step up explora¬tion.
But beyond telling foreign investors about the enormous potentialities that the sedi¬mentary basin offers, Gnangni has the important task of reassuring them that the country is safe and can offer a favourable environment for
private investors within the scope of mutually beneficial partnerships.
Gnangni, who joined Petroci in 1979, was ap¬pointed director general on 17 December 2010. He held several positions including head of geology; head of a project into the promotion of oil blocks; director of exploration and advisor to the director general.
Having reportedly undertaken several projects overseas and with the experi¬ence garnered as chief of staff to the Minister of Mines, Industry & Energy from 1987 to 1993, he is expected to put in place necessary measures to intensify exploration so as to significantly increase produc¬tion in the country.
The graduate of geophysi¬cal engineering from l’Ecole polytechnique in Montreal, Canada, has an enormous task before him to ensure that oil companies increase explo¬ration and drilling offshore after output more than halved to about 30,000 barrels a day because of technical problems.
