Simon Ateba is Chief White House Correspondent for Today News Africa. Simon covers President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, the U.S. government, the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and other financial and international institutions in Washington D.C. and New York City.
The Nigerian Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Chief Timipre Sylva, on Thursday, said Nigeria was meeting its OPEC targets after some initial hiccups, and reiterated his earlier comments that Africa’s most populous country was moving towards gas in 2020.
Speaking to Bloomberg Television’s Francine Lacqua on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Mr. Sylva said the hiccups were due to budgetary adjustments.
He said he was optimistic about the trade challenges between the United States and China.
On the global oil prices, Mr. Sylva said he wished them to be up to $70 per barrel, adding that Nigeria was moving towards gas in the year 2020.
Mr. Sylva’s global television appearance comes only a week after he held his first major press conference in Abuja since he was appointed by President Muhammadu Buhari in 2019, and rolled out the five critical areas of focus for oil and gas sector in Africa’s most populous nation in the year 2020.
Mr. Sylva said his first critical area of focus is to progress the consideration and passage of the overall Petroleum Legislation while the second critical area of focus is to address security situations around Oil and Gas Installations, specifically to curtail theft of petroleum products and crude oil.
He added that his third critical area of focus is to enable the operations of NNPC as a responsive commercial enterprise while the fourth critical area of focus is to conduct bid rounds for marginal fields and to ensure settlement of dispute partners and pave way for FIDs on major capital projects.
The fifth is to deepen domestic gas utilization and overall monetization of gas resources.
