Sopuruchi Onwuka

Nigeria has the opportunity of reviving old oil and gas facilities for enhanced oil production from old and abandoned oilfields in order to achieve broader economic aspirations that entail boost in foreign exchange income and strengthening of the Naira.

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Chief Executive Officer of Kenyon International West Africa Limited, Dr Victor Ekpeyong, stated weekend that urgent need to improve the nation’s foreign exchange income is the main reason the company is working to be part of the industry efforts to realize government’s mandate of the industry to boost production by over a million barrels in the short term.

“Kenyon International has been thriving right from the first day we started operation in 2017 because of the solution it has rendered to oil and gas service companies in rebounding from production downside,” he told guests at Kenyon’s 10^th year anniversary celebration in Lagos.

He said the anniversary celebration themed 10 Years if Impact primarily marked how Kenyon International contributed to oil production recovery in Nigeria.

He noted that the production recovery in the petroleum industry has become a key achievement of the present administration of the government because of the critical role it is playing in stabilizing the Naira through improved forex earnings, noting that the prevailing “surge in terms of oil production has translated to remarkable stability in the domestic exchange rate market.

In prediciting that Nigeria can boost hydrocarbon liquids production including crude oil and natural gas liquids to over 3.0 million barrels per day in the next 10 years, Dr Ekpenyong noted that said service providers like Kenyon are positioned to assist with enhanced oil recovery solutions to make brownfields bounce back to life.

He argued that if stranded and shut in wells around the Niger Delta were revamped, most of them would add to production boost and assist in meeting the fiscal projections of the government across next 10 years.

“So in the next 10 years, we’ll innovate to see how to bring in pipelines that are a little bit flexible, that can be quick to connect from the wellheads to the flow station, instead of spending a lot of time to bring these oilfields back. In the next 10 years, we’ll see what we can also do to boost Nigerian production from where it is today to over 3,000 or 3 million barrels of oil per day,” he forecast.

On the shifting patterns of play in the conventional Niger Delta terrains where international oil companies are yielding space for indigenous brownfield players, Dr Ekpenyong said Kenyon is an expert in brownfield interventions.

“Most of our projects today are in the brownfield sector and the brownfield assets that have been in production for many years. And some of these assets are under divestment. So we play a lot in that space.

“And you cannot overemphasize technology. So we leverage on modern technology. Because there are no monopolies sometimes of technology, there are companies that specialize in bringing out technology to other companies.

“So what happens is that if you can afford afford technology, if you also know how to deploy it, you make the best use of it. So we deploy a lot of homegrown technology and foreign technology into boosting Nigerian oil production in the brownfield,” he explained.

On the role of Kenyon in reentry programmes in the Niger Delta, he said “we are taking very good opportunity of those divestments, and we’re making good use of it.”

In pointing out why Nigeria must accelerate petroleum output at a time of global push for energy transition, Dr Ekpenyong stated that Nigerian cannot be deceived again into abandoning its vital energy resources as it abandoned its coal.

“We abandoned the coal and embraced hydrocarbon. And the countries that had technology on how to extract and process coal -country like India and China -are still using their coal. United States, India, China and Japan are generating electricity through coal,” he noted.

“But we have it in this country and we were forced to abandon it. We abandoned our coal and we jumped into the new ship. Now we have developed technology, developed capacity, developed everything in oil and gas sector, they want us to abandon it!

“Nobody should push us for us to abandon our God-given natural resources to pursue what we do not have control over. So what we need to do as a country right now is for us to maximize, try as much as possible to make use of our hydrocarbon to industrialize, use hydrocarbon to develop. So, when we make use of our hydrocarbon to develop and industrialize, tomorrow we can now think about transition,” he told media representatives in a short lounging.

“At the moment,” he continued, “where we have huge hydrocarbon: gas, oil everywhere in this country? So we as a Nigerians, we need to come together, develop technology on how to extract, process and consume our own God-given resources.”