Nigeria ranks top 3 in deepwater oil projects – Presidency

The presidency has said that Nigeria’s deepwater oil projects now deliver competitive returns and the country has moved from the bottom quartile of 13 indexed countries to the top three.

Olu Verheijen, the special adviser to President Bola Tinubu on energy, disclosed this in a keynote address at an executive session of the Energy Institute and the National Association of Petroleum Explorationists (NAPE).

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In a copy of the address made available to newsmen in Abuja on Friday, Verheijen noted that, in deepwater gas, Nigeria has moved from a total absence of a fiscal framework to having one for the first time in history.

She said the feats were attained by major oil and gas sector reforms by President Tinubu’s administration aimed at improving fiscal attractiveness and ease of doing business.

According to her, the reforms targeted actual bottlenecks and real projects in the investment pipelines.

“In April this year, FID was reached on the Ubeta Non-Associated Gas project, a half-a-billion dollar project.

“The Ubeta field was discovered in 1965 and has finally been unlocked to deliver prosperity to multitudes of Nigerian lives and businesses,” she said.

Verheijen also disclosed that Nigeria is positioned to tap into 90bn Dollars in financing available for deepwater projects around the world, by IOCs that are already operating in the country.

“Accessing 20 per cent of this will be more than enough to bring five major deepwater projects on-stream, unlocking 1.3 billion barrels of oil equivalent (boe).

“We are gearing up for our first FID on a Greenfield deepwater development since the last one (Egina) in 2013.

“Going into 2025, we expect the investment momentum to quicken, proving beyond any doubt that President Tinubu’s energy reform agenda is truly revolutionary. Our challenges are addressable and fixable.

She added: “All these new investments will have major implications for the Nigerian economy.

“The foreign exchange inflows will help with exchange rate management and macroeconomic stability; local economies will benefit from the increased spending on construction and hiring; skill-building and technology transfer will take place.

“Importantly, with the industry infrastructure being developed, each new investment will ensure that subsequent projects are possible at lower costs and with the guarantee of greater returns – creating a virtuous cycle of new investments.”

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The special adviser noted that the session was apt at the time Nigeria needed ever-increasing levels of energy investment to catalyse its economic development.

She added that energy, in its many forms, remains a vital path to higher paying jobs, to industrialisation, to innovation, and to sustained prosperity, for Nigeria and all of Africa.

Verheijen called on the stakeholders to be a part of the unfolding energy revolution in the country.

“We cannot succeed without you, without listening to you and taking your feedback.

“As much as we want to attract financing, we also want to work closely with partners who truly believe in our ability to keep our pledges and to ensure that the reform momentum never loses steam,” she said.