As the year 2025 begins to wind down, the leadership of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC Ltd.), has disclosed plans to work towards achieving 1.8million barrels per day crude oil production by the year 2026.
The Group Chief Executive Official (GCEO) of the NNPC Ltd., Engr. Bashir Ojulari, disclosed this after meeting with President Bola Tinubu to give the management’s 2025 scorecard, and the plan for 2026.
He said: “For next year, I think the conversations in terms of our key priorities, the most important part, again, is to focus on increasing production.
“When we say increasing production, it sounds simple, but there’s a lot that goes into it. It means attracting the right investment to increase production, whether it’s oil or gas. And next year, we’re hoping to achieve at least 1.8 million barrels per day.”
According to him, the significant improvement so far made to the structure of the national oil company and the increased crude oil production were due to the backing of President Tinubu.
Speaking on the achievements, he said “last year, we were about 1.5 million barrels per day. This year, we’re getting to about over 1.7 million barrels per day in terms of oil production.
“The same thing, our gas production has also increased from about 6.5 million standard cubic feet to about over 7 billion standard cubic feet per day.
So, I think some of those are underpinned by the structural changes within the organization.”
He mentioned the other thing that was quite interesting this year, was the successful completion of the welding of the mainline of the Ajaokuta-Kaduna-Kano (AKK) pipeline project valued at approximately $2.8 billion.
“You remember sometimes in summer, we were able to cross the River Niger, which has been a struggle for many years.
“By completing this mainline, what that means now is that we can begin to connect, make all the connections to the mainline, which we will do in the earlier parts of next year.
“And why that is very important is that it brings gas in its full form into the northern part of Nigeria.
“We’re looking at Kaduna, Kano, and also, of course, Ajaukuta and Abuja, where we begin to see industrialization.
“We begin to see industrial parks taking gas for gas-based industry, fertilizer plants, as well as generating power. So those are some of the achievements we’ve made this year,” he added.
The NNPC boss said the company is also expecting to pull in additional investment, significant investment.
“We’re expecting more investment decisions to come through next year. And next year, also, we’re going to be looking at our portfolio as well, to rationalize our portfolio to ensure that we attract more investment for incremental production, as well as more investment to develop all the fields that have been left fallow for a very long time.
“Mr President commended the Board and the Management team for the good start. But also charged us with driving the performance aspirations he has set for us, towards additional investment of over $30 billion by 2030, and 2 million barrels per day of oil production by 2027.
