Shell Tasks FG on Right Investment Climate 

Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Limited (SPDC), has appealed to the federal government to work on  creating the right investment climate that would  enable the expansion of petroleum landscape in the country.

Country Chairman of Shell Companies in Nigeria, and Managing Director, SPDC, Mr. Osagie Okunbor, made the appeal at the flagship Annual International Conference and Exhibition (AICE) organised by the Nigerian Association of Petroleum Explorationists (NAPE).

The conference has as its theme: ‘Expanding Nigeria’s Petroleum Landscape: Digitalisation, Innovation and Emerging New Technologies’.

According to Okunbor, creating  the right investment climate would see Nigeria scale up its oil production from the current average of 2.3 million b/d to 3 million b/d as well as boost country’s proven oil reserves to about 40 billion barrels.

He said: “The right investment climate would also include strengthening our regulatory bodies, giving priorities to research and  enabling the industry’s financials. I believe that where the investment climate is right, digitilisation and deployment of emerging technologies will enable incremental value creation over the coming years.

 Moreso, if we appropriately apply the valuable information and lessons from this conference, our industry will experience a giant leap in transformation. It will support our aspiration of expanding Nigeria’s petroleum landscape.”

 He further added that in Shell, digitilisation was more than technology.

“It is also about people and ensuring more agile ways of working. We employ leading data scientists who unlock value from the vast amounts of data that we have access to in a responsible manner whilst maintaining customer trust.

“Across all our businesses, we look for opportunities where we can replicate and use this at any scale. We look to use applicable standard technologies (unless there is a competitive advantage to building proprietary solutions) to change the way we search for and produce oil and gas, design wells, provide energy, or buy goods and services”, he said.

 The Shell country chair also emphasised the need to challenge students on the use of emerging technologies to enable innovation which will see Nigeria actualise the aspiration of NAPE , which is the expansion of Nigeria’s petroleum landscape through technology.