In a bid to ensure the commercial viability of Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), the management of the Corporation has said it would introduce new business models in all its strategic business units (SBUs) and Corporate Service Units (CSUs).

Speaking during his inaugural town hall meeting with the management and staff of the NNPC recently, the Group Managing Director (GMD), Andrew Yakubu stated that the management team would reposition the Corporation to be commercially focused and profit-driven organisation that is governed by best management practices.

According to Yakubu using the current technology, it would pursue and maintain competitive operational and business efficiency, cost effectiveness, input/output optimization revenue maximization and profitability. It will be recalled that NNPC’s exploration production arm, National Petroleum Development Company (NPDC) before 2010, its production level stood at 65,000 bpd, but in line with the directive it was given by 2010 to attain a production level of 250,000 bpd by 2015, which out grows its production to the current 130,000 bpd.

Commenting on NPDC’s current production level of which the bulk of it is from the Oil Mining Leases (OMLs) assigned to the company through the divestment by some Joint Venture Partners, the company’s managing director, Mr Victor Briggs described the growth as not being organic therefore the need for the company to commence aggressive drilling programme to make its production organic.

He therefore said to attain this target, NPDC has activated a plan to drill 40 wells in the next five years which is an average of eight wells per year.

Briggs noted that the plan was significant and ambitious considering that in the five years the company only 10 wells, which is an average of two wells per year.

He disclosed that the aggressive drilling programme has started with the drilling of Okono 6 and 7 wells in OML 119.

“These two new wells are producing 12,000 bpd. The only way we can increase our production is really by going out there and do the work. It is either you are repairing a well that has gone down because there are technical issues or you are drilling a well. In the case of Okono, it is the latter because we know there are potentials and all we did was to go out there and drill”, he said.

He added that for the company to attain 250,000 bpd target by 2015, it has to do another 100 per cent growth as it did from between 60,000 bpd and 65,000 bpd to about 130,000 bpd.

Briggs explained that first of all, they tried to repair some of the wells in order to restore their production capacities.

Citing OML 26 as an instance, he said from when the asset was handed over the NPDC in June and now the production of the field was doubled.

His words: “To meet the 250,000 bpd target by 2015 means doubling our production as I said earlier, but lam confident that we will meet the target because the resources are there and the reserves are there and we have the people. Everything is therefore set for us to meet the target. For example, in the last five years NPDC drilled 10 wells, but we have a target to drill about 40 wells in the next five years. We have two rigs on site today, one offshore and the other one onshore and by the middle of next year we will bring in one more rig and toward the end of the year we will bring in the fourth rig. I believe we shall keep those rigs for the next two years”.

He further said more rigs would be deployed by next year noting that also key to the programme was the effort to grow the reserves as this was the only was to ensure sustainability.