By Chuks Oyema-Aziken
Chief of Naval Staff, Vice Admiral Emmanuel Ogalla on Tuesday said the Nigerian Navy is committed to working with key maritime stakeholders in improving the country’s oil production capacity.
He said this during his meeting with some key Maritime Stakeholders at the Naval Headquarters Abuja.
According to the CNS “one of the key goals of this Administration and ease of doing business is part of it making sure that they do not constitute obstacles to the Operators rather they should contribute to them being able to perform their duties and produce optimally so provision of security is part of ways of increasing a promoting ease of doing business.
“Also ensuring that their arrests and detentions do not impede on the legitimate business operators. We ensure that when we make arrests, we quickly carry out preliminary investigations and if it was based on wrong information we quickly release those vessels”.
Admiral Ogalla said measures put in place to combat vandalism, and illegal refining of crude oil are yielding successes.
He added that the Navy rejigged its operations and established OP Delta Sanity in January this year, which led to the arrest of 35 ships involved in oil theft and handed them over to appropriate prosecuting agencies.
“In agenda we will continue to lean on your support, especially you in the oil and gas sector, as well as the regulators to improve Nigeria’s daily production for the enhanced National revenue and economic prosperity of this country,” he said.
The Chief Executive, Nigerian National Petroleum Company, NNPC, Mallam Mele Kyari who was represented by the Managing Director of NNPC Pipeline Storage Company, Florosho Kareem commended the Nigerian Navy for the support given to them that contributed their successes recorded in the in oil and gas production.
He added that there is a reduction in the oil theft and the pipeline vandalism have also decreased significantly and a lot have been presently going on in the industry right now and they hope that they will sustain this.
According to him, the target is to increase production to 2 million barrels by the end of the year and they are fully committed to doing that.
The representative of the Chief Executive of Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission, (NUPRC), Gbenga Komolafe said that “Nigerian Navy has been doing in curbing oil theft and to ensure that peace is restored in the upstream and downstream and in the maritime sector as a whole”.
According to him, they have been working collaboratively with the Navy with respect to alternative crude evacuation and movements.
He said that “they are going to engage about 25 or 20 of Navy staff in order to see how they can engage in building capacity and they have also written to all the oil company to see how they can further integrate the team and how the physicalized and de-physicalized all the export terminal in Nigeria so that they continue to work together in order to increase their production”.
Earlier, the Chief of Policy and Plans, Rear Admiral Joseph Akpan said the meeting is on how to better address security challenges in the maritime environment and how to consolidate on the achievement so far in the last six months.
