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Nigerian firms will survive oil price slump — FG

By on March 19, 2016

Nigerian companies in the oil and gas as well as financial sectors will survive the plunge in the global prices of crude oil, the Federal Government has said.

Although the government said the fall in oil prices would not plunge indigenous firms into bankruptcy, it urged the concerned companies to embrace new technologies and innovation in order to overcome the hard times.

The Minister of Petroleum Resources and Group Managing Director, Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, stated this in Abuja on Thursday at the closing ceremony of the sixth African Petroleum Congress and Exhibition.

This came just as the government acknowledged the contribution of the Lagos deep offshore logistics as one of the strategic investments in Nigeria currently driving the economy.

Kachickwu said, “I think anybody who wants to survive in this climate today will need to put on the hat of thinking. It is not business as usual, but people are going to survive. The nice thing about adversity is that you get to make huge successes also. Companies that are ready to embrace new technologies, strategies and new ways of doing things are going to survive.

“It is not going to be for too long. Nigeria, for example, has put its strategies around getting the oil companies back to full time work. And we are still looking at alternative funding sources; we are looking at diverging more into our gas products to complement our oil production. New ideas on how to survive and how to multiply the sort of income that is available to you are key to survive. I think Nigerian companies are very resilient, they will survive.”

The minister told the gathering that oil-producing countries as well as oil and gas companies had come to the sudden realisation of not only the need to cut costs, but also ensure the efficient management of proceeds from crude oil production and sale.

Kachikwu said, “There is a sudden realisation that not only do we need to come together to cut our costs to see how to survive in this unhealthy petroleum climate, but also that countries will need to do a whole lot more in terms of how they utilise the proceeds of production going forward.”

 

[Punch]