The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Chief Timipre Sylva, on Tuesday promised to reduce oil production cost in the country.
A statement explained that it was part of what he aspired to achieve in the industry.
“We have to bring down our cost of production of crude, as we are presently a laughing stock in the way we do our business. I don’t see how we can sustain the losses,” he said.
He was speaking when the Country Chair and Managing Director of Total E & P (Nigeria), Mr. Mike Sangster, led a delegation of the oil major on a courtesy call to his office in Abuja.
Sylva also frowned at the practice by some International Oil Companies (IOCs) and expressed the hope that Total E & P is not among the OICs “selling our assets”, declaring that “those assets are amortised assets; you can’t sell what you don’t have!”
He said he expected the country to be producing no less than four million barrels of crude per day (bpd) but decried the situation where the country is hovering between 2 million and 2.2 million!
