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The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) seeks to partner the Nigerian Academy of Engineering and other stakeholders to add value to the country’s hydrocarbon resources.
Speaking in Lagos at the weekend during his induction as a fellow of the academy, the Group Managing Director of NNPC, Mr. Andrew Yakubu, would partner other engineering stakeholders for a mutually beneficial synergy.
“I am glad that I am coming into the academy as a sitting Group Managing Director of NNPC. This is the first time it is happening. That means it is the beginning of creating mutually beneficial synergy between the wealth of experience of our elders and other stakeholders to add value to oil and gas,” Yakubu said.
In his lead presentation at the event, the guest speaker and emeritus professor of Chemical Engineering, University of Lagos, Prof. Alfred Akpoveta Susu, said only few challenges in the world today are more threatening than the unsustainable nature of the energy infrastructure.
He said every aspect of contemporary society was dependent upon the availability of clean, affordable, flexible and sustainable energy.
“Yet our current energy infrastructure, heavily dependent upon fossil fuels, is unsustainable. Global oil production is expected to peak within the next several decades.
"While there are substantial reserves of coal and tar sands, the mining, processing and burning of these fossil fuels poses increasingly unacceptable risk to both humankind and the environment, particularly within the context of global climate change,” he said.
Susu further stated that recent analysis of world petroleum production and known reserves suggest that global oil production could peak as early as the next decade, with gas production peaking a decade later.
Citing further studies, he suggested that “holding off the peak until 2040 would require both a high and much less, certain total oil resource and adding more production each year than ever before, despite having already produced all of the world’s most easily extractable,” he said.
He noted that the consequence of passing over the global production peak is not the disappearance of oil, as roughly half of the reserves would remain.
“Rather, it would be a permanent imbalance between supply and demand that would drive oil prices dramatically higher than today’s levels – $100 per barrel; $200 per barrel and beyond, with corresponding increases at the pump.
"The rapidly increasing oil and gas demand from developing economies such as China, India and Latin America make this imbalance even more serious,particularly when it is noted that the United States currently consumes 25per cent of world’s production” he explained.
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