The Group Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL), Bayo Ojulari, is confident that the nation’s oil production would hit 1.8 million barrels per day crude benchmark before the year ends.
Ojulari stated this on Sunday after visiting President Bola Tinubu in Lagos.
The NNPCL boss was in Lagos to brief the President on the activities of the national oil company since his appointment on April 2.
“With some of the turnaround maintenance that we have done in August and September, all of those are meant to come back this month.
“We are hoping that before the end of the year, we should be clocking at least 1.8 million barrels per day,” he stated.
The Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria and Dangote Refinery have been at loggerheads over the alleged sacking of more than 800 Nigerian workers and replacing them with foreign staff.
To press home their demands, PENGASSAN on September 26 instructed its members to embark on a nationwide strike.
Five days later, the union suspended its nationwide strike — after the Dangote Group agreed to redeploy the workers sacked by its subsidiary, Dangote refinery, following the Federal Government’s intervention.
Weighing in on this, the NNPC boss lamented the loss that occurred within the short period the strike lasted.
He explained that the nation lost what he described as significant production to the industrial action.
“It was quite unfortunate that the Dangote and PENGASSAN issue led to the strike. As you know, whenever there is strike and critical staff manning critical facilities are not available, it is almost impossible.
“In this particular case, we actually lost over 200,000 barrels per day production that was deferred.
“We also had gas production that was deferred, and power generation was also impacted, about 1.2 megawatt of power was affected by that strike,” he added.
On September 30, the Federal Government, via the Office of the National Security Adviser, Nuhu Ribadu, waded into the rift between Dangote Refinery and PENGASSAN.
The meeting was fruitful as the union resolved to sheathe its sword while the refinery agreed to recall the sacked workers.
To the NNPCL boss, the intervention was a good move for the good of the economy.
“I am very pleased that the Federal Government, through the leadership of the Minister of Labour and full support of the National Security Adviser, was able to put together everyone into a dialogue and bring everybody to the table.
“We are all very hopeful that everyone will abide by the communique. Since we can return quite a number of the production to status quo, there are one or two areas we are still trying to catch up. But overall, we have gradually gone back to restore the lost production and deferment that we have.”