Chineme Okafor in Abuja
Nigeria would be seeking to get the rest of Africa to focus on integrating their energy resources for development at the upcoming 2020 edition of the Nigeria International Petroleum Summit (NIPS), organisers of the parley have said.
Brevity Anderson which is the event organizer, explained in a statement that the country’s intention at the 2020 edition of the NIPS scheduled to hold between February 9 and 13, in Abuja, would be to get countries in Africa begin to focus on furthering energy integration for the continent’s much needed renaissance and shared prosperity in the unfolding decade.
With the theme, ‘widening the integration circle: technology, knowledge, sustainability and partnership’, the organisers explained that the use of emerging technologies and knowledge for the benefit of exploiting the continent’s vast hydrocarbon potential in a sustainable way would be emphasised at the conference.
“Africa’s energy sector needs to move into the new decade with a serious and result-oriented conversation around technology, policies and investment in our quest to build a more prosperous continent,” said the Managing Director of Brevity Anderson, Mr. James Shindi.
According to the statement, the summit has also realised that the continent’s energy sector cannot reach its desired destination without the pre-requisite investment and as such would have a keynote address delivered by the Chairman of the World Energy Council, Younghoon David Kim at the Africa’s ministerial session.
The session would focus on ‘the pursuit of new investors and strategic collaborations to exploit natural reserves.’
Similarly, the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Mr. Timipre Sylva, who reportedly supported the parley, would deliver a presentation on how Nigeria’s oil and gas industry has fared over the past 60 years.
The statement noted that at the NIPS, the Secretary-General of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), Dr. Mohammad Barkindo will launch the OPEC World Oil Outlook for 2020 (WOO2020).
It explained that: “NIPS is a federal government of Nigeria official petroleum industry event with the federal ministry of petroleum resources and all its parastatals including the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Nigeria Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB) and Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) are joint hosts.
“The event is a convergence of African and global energy heavyweights and it is a reflection Nigeria’s unique place on the map of oil and gas industry regionally and internationally.”
