President Bola Tinubu has directed a reduction of the oil and gas contract timeline from three years to six months.
Olu Verheijen, special adviser to the president on energy, who disclosed this during a ministerial press briefing on March 8, in Abuja, said Tinubu also directed the same timeframe for project delivery.
Verheijen said benchmarking and analysis revealed the contract cycle takes up to 36 months.
She said compressing the cycle to less than six months corresponds with global averages.
“This will expedite the delivery of oil and gas products to the market and enhance overall value for the country,” Verheijen said.
The special adviser said it is necessary to address the fundamental issues in the sectors to attract capital as no one would invest in Infrastructure if there is no assurance.
“So, if gas suppliers are not making any investment because the fiscal terms of the business environment is a very difficult one in which to invest in, then it will be difficult to continue to mature mainstream projects and downstream projects because you have to deal with the ab initio problem which is gas supply,” she said.
“And that is exactly what President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has done by fast-tracking these policy directives to ensure that we have sufficient gas supply whether we’re trying to export, whether we’re trying to compress natural gas or liquefied for domestic use, whether we’re trying to have floating energy as an alternative ways of getting gas into the market, all of those things are enabled by these policies.”
