Nigeria could produce 6 million barrels of oil per day with adequate investment in its energy sector, the nation’s oil minister said on Tuesday.
Nigeria is a member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) but its oil production has declined to just over 1.3 million barrels per day. Oil major Shell exited the country.
Nigeria and other African oil-producing countries lack the capital to explore and produce their oil and gas, said oil minister Heineken Lokpobiri at the Offshore Technology Conference (OTC) in Houston.
African nations must give priority to producing their own oil and gas reserves, he said, accusing Western countries of using access to capital as a means of compelling African countries not to explore for oil and gas resources.
But another executive on the panel said money is not the main problem. Corruption leadership and discipline is the real problem facing Africa, said Kosmos Energy Senior Vice President Joe Mensah, who also spoke at the conference.
“Corruption. That’s what’s killing us. There is plenty of money on the continent today, you do not need to go outside of the continent to find money to do work,” Mensah said.
Lokpobiri also pointed to cash being available for energy transition over fossil fuels. Africa needs to address the lack of oil and gas before its can talk about transiting to clean fuels, he said.
The COP Climate Summit’s pledges of funding to mitigate warming “will never come,” he told attendees. “Right now we do not have energy to transform to anything,” Lokpobiri said.
The U.S. is the largest oil and gas producer in the world, but is asking Africa to stop exploring and producing oil, the minister said.
(Reporting by Curtis Williams and Georgina McCarthy; Editing by Stephen Coates)