Insecurity increasing cost of oil production – Sylva

The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylva has blamed insecurity for the high cost of producing petroleum products in the country.

The minister during the fourth annual lecture and award presentation by ValueChain Magazine yesterday in Abuja, said: “Security is one of the main horse drivers in the industry. If we are going to tackle insecurity in the maritime sector, we must work with the oil sector for it to impact the Nigerian economy.

“This is because the industry is bedevilled by a lot of security issues which has brought up the cost of production to levels that are too high.”

The Managing Director of Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Mele Kyari pointed out that the oil & gas and maritime sectors face multiple challenges and must plan for an increasingly complex and uncertain future.

The Director General of Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), Bashir Jamoh disclosed that since its launch of Strategies Security Intelligence in Africa, Blue Deep has reduced the number of piracy attacks in the country.

The Director of the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR), Auwalu Sarki, noted that the oil & gas and maritime industries have a lot in common to share in security and surveillance, since out of the 31 crude oil and gas terminals, 26 are offshore in the form of Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) and Floating Storage and Offloading (FSO) vessels.

The Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Value Chain Magazine, Musa Bashir Usman said the event was organized to strengthen the cooperation among operators in the maritime and oil and gas sectors given the emergence of COVID-19 and other emerging challenges facing the maritime and oil and gas industries.