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A minister-designate and Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, has said with the confidence this present administration has built since it assumed office 11 weeks ago, the country would attract an inflow of foreign investments in excess of $20 billion over 2016 “if we chase them the right way.”


Speaking on the $6 billion cash call arrears owed the international oil companies (IOCs) by the NNPC and the commercial arbitration awards, which he said also stood at about $6 billion, Kachikwu stated that what was needed was the restoration of the confidence of investors to bring in new funding, while solutions are being explored to repay the historical debts.

Kachikwu, who spoke in Lagos at a luncheon organised in his honour by the Petroleum Club at the weekend, said his target was to find the solutions to the arrears of cash calls before the end of the year, adding that he has also charged the IOCs to come up with outside-the-box solutions to tackle the funding challenges.


“The reality is that Nigeria is not going to write anybody any $6 billion cheque. If we do, it will bounce. So, we have to face that reality. We need to find solutions,” he said.

Kachikwu revealed that there were three options to deal with the funding issues and not for the IOCs “to write letters to me and I will say that I don’t have the money.

“Unless we deal with that, the credibility issue will remain and people will not bring in new money and the industry will suffer. First, we have to restore that credibility; find solutions and sign agreements that give them hope,” he added.
Kachikwu said with the confidence built in the past 11 weeks, the country would attract $20 billion investment over 2016, stressing that Chevron has brought the first $1.2 billion.

He said the NNPC had over the years developed a strong reputation for poor performance but added that if the corporation continues to be heated up, their ability to access funding abroad or get serious international partners will be weakened.

“One of my challenges with NNPC’s reputation is two-fold. I need to correct the things that cause these reputational issues. The truth is that I need to stop heating up NNPC because whether you like it or not, if we continue to heat up NNPC, their ability to access funding abroad or get serious partners will be weakened. So, we need to correct the errors without being sensational on the issues, otherwise the country loses credibility. The second reason is that not everything written about NNPC is true and the only way to show that is that we are going to do forensic audit of the books of the corporation,” Kachikwu said.

He said one of the challenges he would have to contend with after his exit from office would be a reduction in the number of his friends.

“The moment you want to do a clean work in Nigeria, you are going to have limited friends and that is probably the case with people not serving too long in portfolios. You need to go in there and achieve the objectives for which you are hired,” he added.

Kachikwu noted that President Muhammadu Buhari was deeply worried about the impacts of the problems in the oil and gas industry, adding that “unless the petroleum industry gets cleared and gets sorted out, not much really can happen in the economy.

“I have to thank profusely the president for deeming me capable after just few weeks in NNPC to occupy the portfolio he is about to sign to me. I think the essence for him is that there is going to be continuity; there is going to be fairness and there is need for him to have a holistic overview of what is going on. He, like you know, has occupied this portfolio before, more than anybody else,” he explained.

On the state of the refineries, Kachikwu said capacity utilisation was at all-time low, stressing that Port Harcourt refinery is currently out of operation.
He said the country had been feeding $45 per barrel crude oil into the refineries and bringing out $15 worth of petroleum products, largely Low Pour Fuel Oil (LPFO).

Source: http://www.thisdaylive.com/articles/kachikwu-targets-20bn-investment-in-2016/225118/

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It's alright. I guess they want to build a new country with it.

drberry:
It's alright. I guess they want to build a new country with it.

okay