NNPC Group Managing Director Andrew Yakubu said at the Offshore West Africa Oil and gas conference on Tuesday in Accra, Ghana that Nigeria’s oil and gas production had been on the decline due to crude oil theft and severe flooding in the Niger Delta.

According to reports by Nigeria’s national newspaper, The Guardian, on Wednesday, Yakubu, who was represented by the Group General Manager of Corporate Audit, Isa Inuwa, told the conference that the NNPC would also deploy 2billion cubic feet of gas per day of natural gas by 2015 to boost local power generation.

“Future growth in power generation would continue to be gas-based as we aspire to a 40MW generation capacity by 20:2020,” he said.

Yakubu noted that the corporation was more concerned about boosting the country’s crude oil and gas production capacity.

“Government’s focus on gas development and ensuring its availability for power generation is based on the firm belief that the spin-off effects of a reliable power supply would provide a solid base for industrialisation, leading to the provision of employment opportunity and attracting the much needed investment in the country.

“Government plans to build a Central Processing Facility (CPF) in Rivers State from which would come wet gas from wells, which would be processed into dry gas and natural gas,” Yakubu stated.

This initiative, according to him, also involves the setting up of a world-class petrochemical plant with the capacity to produce 1.3 million tonnes of polyethylene and 400,000 tonnes of polyethylene yearly.

He also said that the government was envisaging that from this plant, myriad secondary industries would be developed.

“Still under the initiative, government plans to have two world-class fertiliser plants with the capacity of 1.3 million tonnes per annum, each to be located in Lagos and Delta State. This is an initiative we strongly believe will attract investors into the country,” he said.

According to him, the deregulation of the downstream sector will attract private investors.

“No bank would support any investment in regulated downstream sector. In other words, the huge private investments witnessed in telecommunication or aviation will ever come the way of the downstream sector. What we may witness is marginal investment in such areas as reception facilities or construction of fuel stations which are not the critical segment of the sector,” he added.

He said that the corporation was working hard to provide the most conducive environment for the oil and gas potential to be realised.