Aiteo to invest $5bn to increase production to 250,000b/d
Nigerian energy giant, Aiteo Eastern Exploration and Production Company, has recently announced plans to inject over $5 billion investments in its operations to boost its production to 250,000 barrels per day.
Chief Executive officer, Aiteo, Victor Okoronkwo, made this known at the Nigerian Oil & Gas Conference and Exhibition in Abuja. He said the development would also spur increase of the country’s gas supply to 300 million scuf per day.
He said: “Aiteo is one of the biggest single investment decision makers when we have invested over $2 billion in acquiring the Oil Mining Lease, OML, 29 assets. At the moment, we do have our development plan which has been submitted to our joint venture partners, JV, and because the government is exiting the cash call situation, we are negotiating an alternative finance package to be able to fund about $5billion of investment. The investment would move production to 250,000 barrels per day.
“However, this will increase our gas supply to about 300 million standard cubic feet, SCF, of gas per day, which will be enough to power more than 1.2 gigawatts of electricity in Nigeria. On finances, it is going to be a cocktail of financing options depending on how we land with the alternative financing mechanism we are working with our joint venture partners NNPC.”
Also speaking on challenges confronting the industry success story, he beckoned on the federal government to step up its efforts in stemming the menace of crude theft and vandalism rocking the industry.
He said: “Aiteo operate a very key strategic piece of oil and gas infrastructure which is the Nembe Creek trunk line, which is over 100 kilometres and increasingly, there has been a lot of incursions on that pipeline leading to outages of production, sometimes shut down. This pipeline, not only does it deliver Aiteo crude to the terminal, it carries crude to Shell. If we look at the shutdown impact in financial terms as a result of this oil breakages and theft, it is close to $2billion in the past four years. That is what we have lost not just as a company but as a nation.
“To this end, the royalties that ought to have accrued to the country had vanished because of the activities of these vandals. That is why we are calling on the government to collaborate with us and find a lasting solution to this menace bedeviling the industry.”
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