Bashir Bayo Ojulari, the group chief executive officer (GCEO) of NNPC Limited, announced this at a company-wide town hall meeting on Tuesday at the NNPC Towers, Abuja.

He stated that the position isn’t a shift. Rather, it is informed by ongoing detailed technical and financial reviews of the Port Harcourt, Kaduna and Warri refineries.

The ongoing review indicates that the earlier decision to operate the Port Harcourt refinery prior to full completion of its rehabilitation was ill-informed and sub-commercial, Ojulari said.

Although progress is being made on all three refineries, the emerging outlook calls for more advanced technical partnerships to complete and high-grade the rehabilitation of the Port Harcourt refinery.

Thus, selling is highly unlikely as it would lead to further value erosion.

The announcement comes in the wake of widespread speculation following his remarks at the 2025 OPEC Seminar in Vienna, Austria earlier this month, where he said during an interview with Bloomberg that “all options are on the table.” The comment sparked speculation and headlines about the future of the nation’s refining assets.

The declaration was received with applause from hundreds of staff attendees, who described the position as a renewed sense of business-focused direction across the organisation.

The town hall served as more than a performance update, it was an opportunity for candid and constructive engagement.

The Executive Vice Presidents presented progress reports from the Upstream, Downstream, Finance, Business Services, Gas, Power, and New Energy businesses, highlighting operational achievements, ongoing reforms, and areas requiring attention.

In a tone marked by honesty and leadership, challenges and earlier missteps were acknowledged, and a clear roadmap was outlined for the journey ahead.

The announcement reinforces NNPC’s mandate as a strategic custodian of national energy infrastructure and reflects a firm resolve to deliver on the complete rehabilitation and long-term viability of Nigeria’s refineries. It also signals continuity in the Federal Government’s broader energy security objectives and a commitment to retaining critical assets under national control.

Feedback during and after the session revealed a workforce energised and aligned with the leadership’s vision. Described as “reassuring,” “transformational,” and “sustainable,” the atmosphere reflected an optimist outlook among employees and hopefulness about the company’s evolving strategic direction.

NNPC Ltd will continue to reposition itself as a commercially driven, professionally managed national energy company, grounded in transparency, focused on performance, and unwavering in its responsibility to its number one stakeholder group, Nigerians, Ojulari concluded.

The initiative will work to combat critical issues of deforestation, biodiversity loss, and climate change in 11 littoral communities of Bayelsa State while simultaneously enhancing the socio-economic well-being of the local population.

In Nigeria, the situation calls for immediate action, with an estimated 70-80% of the nation’s original forests already lost due to unsustainable logging and agricultural expansion, as reported by Global Forest Watch and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Moreover, Nigeria harbours 309 species that are currently listed as threatened on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List.

Without immediate and decisive action, Nigeria is on track to lose its remaining mangrove forests by 2050, according to projections by the Nigerian Conservation Foundation (NCF) – a loss that would not only exacerbate the effects of climate change but also further endanger the country’s rich biodiversity.

In response to these pressing issues, the ALEC Initiative will plant half a million trees over a span of 5 years and work towards rehabilitating and conserving critical ecosystems in the host communities for the NNPC Ltd/FIRST E&P JV.

In addition to contributing to global climate mitigation efforts through enhanced carbon sequestration, the initiative will help restore some critical mangrove and tropical forest habitats for these communities in a bid to create greener, more sustainable ecosystems that benefit both people and wildlife.

Commenting on the partnership signing, Bala Wunti, chief upstream investment officer, NNPC Upstream Investment Management Services (NUIMS), said,

“this initiative reflects our dedication to environmental stewardship and social responsibility as well as a clear understanding that sustainable business success is inherently tied to the well-being of the communities we serve and the ecosystems we rely on.”

“The ALEC Project marks a pivotal step in our journey towards a sustainable future,” said Mr. Etomi, Executive Director, Corporate Services at FIRST E&P, during the partnership signing event.

“By restoring the vital ecosystems of our host communities, we are not only addressing a critical environmental need but also empowering local communities with new economic opportunities. This project exemplifies the powerful synergy between environmental stewardship and community development, underscoring our deep commitment to leaving a lasting legacy of positive impact.”

Also speaking at the partnership signing, the Director General of the Nigerian Conservation Foundation (NCF), Dr. Joseph Onoja, remarked,

“We are very excited about this project because it aligns with our strategic pillars, such as habitat restoration, tackling the climate crisis, and species conservation. This project will help us achieve some of the key goals we have set and ensure that people in the beneficiary communities, as well as Nigerians as a whole, enjoy a better quality of life while safeguarding the environment.”

Officially launched this week with a signing event at the Lekki Conservation Centre in Lagos, the project marks the beginning of an ambitious journey toward environmental renewal and community resilience.

This initiative not only reinforces Nigeria’s leadership in global efforts to combat climate change and biodiversity loss but also underscores the nation’s critical role in fostering sustainable development.

In the editorial entitled: “NNPCL: Liability or Asset to Nigerians?”, the newspaper set out to paint the picture of NNPC Ltd that is a liability to Nigeria instead of an asset that it should be.

It chronicled a litany of issues which in its estimation have made the company to lose its place as an asset to the nation.

As to be expected, all the issues it raised were either outright lies or unfair misrepresentation of facts. Let’s take a look at them one by one.

According to the newspaper, NNPC Ltd.’s status as an asset is undercut by the opacity of its operations and corruption.

The truth, however, is that this is a regurgitation of age-long allegations that have since been overtaken by the emergence of Mr. Mele Kyari as the Group Chief Executive Officer of the company and the transition of the old NNPC as a corporation into a limited liability company under the Petroleum Industry Act.

One of the key thrusts of the Kyari-led management since 2019 has been its focus on transparency and accountability.

This was what gave rise to the Transparency, Accountability and Performance Excellence (TAPE) management philosophy under which the company’s audited financial statements began to be published annually since 2019.

In fact, the same BusinessDay newspaper that is so bent on hanging the tag of opacity on the company actually honoured Kyari with its “Energy Executive of the Year” award in 2021 for turning the fortunes of the company around and entrenching the culture of transparency in the company.

But out of sheer mischief, the newspaper has forgotten so soon and chosen to borrow some ignoble tricks from Josef Goebbel’s playbook that of repeating the lies of opacity and corruption against the NNPC Ltd frequently with the hope of sustaining the propaganda just so well the public would believe the lies to be the truth.

The next point made in the editorial is that of mismanagement of resources and inefficiency. In its bid to present a semblance of balance, the newspaper acknowledged the role of government interference in the company.

A bulk of the legacy problems, such as the age-long lack of maintenance of the refineries, is traceable to government interference.

Any old refinery staff member of the NNPC Ltd will tell you that NNPC engineers used to carry out the turn-around maintenance of the refineries until past governments started dabbling in to influence contracts for their cronies.

However, with the PIA, all that is behind as the NNPC Ltd now operates as a limited liability company under the Company and Allied Matters Act (CAMA). As is presently constituted, the company is owned by the government through the Ministry of Finance Incorporated and the Ministry of Petroleum.

But the PIA envisages that in no distant time, the company will be listed on the stock exchange with shares owned by Nigerians in their individual capacities.

But prior to that time, the management of the company under Kyari has instituted a management system encapsulated in the Performance Excellence element of the TAPE philosophy.

Under this, the company has made great strides in moving from a position of loss in 2019 to consistent profitability.

This is in spite of the fact that the company contends with monstrous odds in the form of crude oil theft and pipeline vandalism.

The fact is: companies like Saudi Aramco, with which the newspaper tried to benchmark the NNPC Ltd, do not contend with such odds that have very practical implications for crude oil production.

The newspaper is only being disingenuous in blaming the nation’s suboptimal crude oil production on inefficiency in the NNPC Ltd when it is common knowledge that the security challenges are not of the company’s making. But even at that, the NNPC Ltd has not fared badly in managing the bad situation to get the results that it has been posting in the past few years.

The truth is that the current reality of the NNPC Ltd, in terms of management and performance, does not reflect the picture of mismanagement and inefficiency that the BusinessDay tried to paint in its editorial.

The question that arises from all this, which the BusinessDay must answer, is: do companies that have issues with mismanagement of resources and inefficiency make profits as the NNPC Ltd has consistently done in the past three years?

The other issue that has stymied the NNPC Ltd from being an asset to the nation, according to the BusinessDay, is its monopolistic control of the petroleum sector. Supporting its position, the newspapers states: “The corporation’s dominant position as the sole importer of petrol and the primary issuer of import licenses for diesel creates market distortions”.

This allegation, coming from a business newspaper like the BusinessDay, is very curious. For the newspaper to state that NNPC Ltd is the “primary issuer of import licenses for diesel” shows how little it knows about the oil and gas industry.

It only means that the BusinessDay either does not know the difference between an industry regulator and an operator or it just wants to take its mischief to a ridiculous level, hoping that the public would swallow its lies hook, line, and sinker.

For the avoidance of doubt, NNPC Ltd does not issue import licenses for diesel or any petroleum product for that matter.

This is because, NNPC Ltd, as provided in Section 64 of the PIA, is an operator just like any other company that operates in the oil and gas sector, and not a regulator.

The PIA makes provision for the establishment of two regulatory agencies in the sector. They are the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA) and the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC). The newspaper actually acknowledged these two regulatory agencies in the editorial.

But how it came by the idea that the NNPC Ltd issues import licenses to marketers, a clear regulatory function, is really difficult to understand. This, however, goes to show that the newspaper and its editors know very little about the subject matter of their editorial.

On the allegation that NNPC Ltd runs a monopoly in the importation of petrol, here are the facts that the BusinessDay failed to acknowledge in its editorial. When the downstream sector was deregulated on 29th May, 2023, with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s declaration that fuel subsidy was gone, every petroleum marketer was automatically empowered to import the product and sell at whatever price(s) they chose.

NNPC Ltd only stepped in to close the gap as a supplier of last resort, a role assigned to it by the framers of the PIA to guarantee energy security for the nation.

NNPC Ltd did not muscle any marketer out of petrol importation to become a monopoly. Besides, it does not look like the company is making any profit from being the sole importer of petrol which is usually the major objective of monopolists.

In fact, by playing this role of sole importer of petrol at this time when others are not able to import the product, NNPC Ltd has proved to be a huge asset to the nation- much more of an asset than the BusinessDay would want Nigerians and the world to believe!

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Soneye, is the Chief Corporate Communications Officer, NNPC Ltd.

Kyari, who disclosed this on Thursday during the simultaneous commissioning of 12 CNG stations in Abuja and Lagos, said in addition to the massive deployment of CNG stations nationwide, the NNPC Ltd and its partners would also build three Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) stations in Ajaokuta.

“There is simply no way to turn back on delivering CNG for all Nigerians. It is the right thing to do. Is it late? Yes, but we will make progress, we will cover the gap in order to ensure that the volatility we see with Premium Motor Spirit (petrol) does not apply to gas,” Kyari stated.

The GCEO commended President Bola Ahmed Tinubu for providing the needed support to drive domestic gas utilisation aimed at delivering cleaner and cheaper source of energy to Nigerians.

While assuring that the NNPC Ltd will continue to deliver more strategic gas projects for the benefit of Nigerians in line with the Presidential CNG Initiative of bringing prosperity to all Nigerians, Kyari reaffirmed the determination of the NNPC to guarantee the nation’s energy security.

Also speaking at the occasion, the Managing Director, NNPC Retail Limited, Mr. Huub Stokman revealed that in the next one year, NNPC Retail would have launched over 100 CNG sites, including 16 NNPC Gas Marketing and NIPCO Gas JV sites.

“CNG provides Nigeria with affordable alternatives to existing available fuel products. It will be about 40% cheaper than petrol in Nigeria and with continued investments, it will become a significant part of our energy mix,” Stokman added.

In his remarks, Minister of State for Petroleum Resources (Gas), Rt. Hon. Ekperikpe Ekpo said the commissioning of the stations will not only provide economic benefits by creating jobs and stimulating local economies, it will also contribute significantly to Nigeria’s national goals of reducing emissions and combating climate change.

On his part, the Chairman of the NNPC Board of Directors, Chief Pius Akinyelure said increased CNG adoption will foster economic benefits by reducing fuel costs for consumers and businesses alike.

Following the removal of fuel subsidy and the declaration of the Presidential Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) initiatives, NNPC Limited has taken the lead in the deployment of Auto-CNG Stations across Nigeria.

Already, NNPC Gas Marketing Limited, a subsidiary of NNPC Limited, in partnership with NIPCO Gas Limited has developed an Auto-CNG rollout plan for construction of thirty-five (35) CNG stations across the various geographical zones of Nigeria.

This year’s edition of the biennial event themed “Healthy Workforce, Productive Organization,” symbolises NNPC Ltd’s belief in the integral role of physical well-being towards enhancing organizational productivity among employees.

The event will see the Company’s employees competing in 13 games namely football, basketball, volleyball, chess, squash, scrabble, 8-ball pool, golf, tennis, table tennis, badminton, swimming and athletics.

The one-week event, which will climax on Friday, 23rd February, 2024, will also feature a novelty match that will see the NNPC Ltd Football Team trading tackles with Ex-Super Eagles Stars, led by Nigeria’s legendary Captain, Austin JJ Okocha.

This year, the six NNPC Ltd zones have undergone a restructuring, following their consolidation into three teams that represent the Company’s three core values of Integrity (Port Harcourt/Benin); Excellence (Lagos/Warri) and Sustainability (Abuja/Kaduna).

The tournament, which is set to showcase friendly yet spirited contests among the three teams, will also serve as a platform for selecting NNPC Ltd’s potential flagbearers at the forthcoming Nigeria Oil & Gas Industry Games (NOGIG) in April 2024, where the Company will defend its title of Overall Winner, a feat it has maintained over the years.

The NNPC Ltd has been a serial winner of the NOGIG Games, which also features other participants from International Oil Companies (IOCs) operating in Nigeria and key agencies under the Federal Ministry of Petroleum Resources.

During the last edition of NOGIG held in 2020 at the Teslim Balogun Stadium in Lagos, NNPC Ltd emerged the overall winner of the tournament, carting home 48 laurels, which include 13 gold, 16 silver and 19 bronze medals.

Maryamu Idris, Executive Director, Crude & Condensate, NNPC Trading Limited, said in a panel presentation at the Argus European Crude Conference in London, that in addition to the substantial price shocks impacting commodity and energy prices globally, the conflict between Russia and Ukraine has triggered a situation where India, a primary destination for Nigerian grades, increased its appetite for discounted Russian barrels to the detriment of some Nigerian volumes.

NNPCL Working with Stakeholders on NEITI 2021 Account Reconciliation

“To illustrate the extent of this shift, Nigeria’s crude exports to India dwindled from approximately 250,000 barrels per day (bpd) in the six months preceding the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine to 194,000 in the subsequent six months afterwards. And so far, this year, only around 120,000 bpd of Nigerian crude volumes have made their way to India,” she said.

On the other hand, she noted that the Nigerian crude flow to Europe has increased in a bid to fill supply gaps left by the ban on Russian crude, pointing out that six months before the war, 678,000 bpd of Nigerian crude grades went to Europe, compared to 710,000 bpd six months later and 730,000 bpd so far this year.

“This trend makes it evident that Nigerian grades are increasingly becoming a significant component in the post-war palette of European refiners. Several Nigerian distillate-rich grades have become a steady preference for many European refiners, given the absence of Russian Urals and diesel. Forcados Blend, Escravos Light, Bonga, and Egina appear to be the most popular, and our latest addition — Nembe Crude – fits well into this basket. This was a strong factor behind our choice of London and the Argus European Crude Conference as the most ideal launch hub for the grade,” Idris also said.

On production challenges, Idris remarked that, like many other oil-producing countries, Nigeria had faced production challenges aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic, including reduced investment in the upstream sector, supply chain disruptions impacting upstream operations, ageing oil fields, and oil theft by unscrupulous elements.

These factors, she said, contributed to production declines in the second half of 2022 and early 2023.

Idris, however, noted that the challenges are fast becoming a thing of the past with the introduction and implementation of a new framework for the domestic petroleum industry (the PIA of 2021), rejuvenating the business landscape, and re-positioning NNPC Limited to adopt a more commercial approach to the management of the nation’s hydrocarbon resources.

According to her, NNPC Limited has secured vital partnerships with notable financial institutions to promote upstream investments to restore and sustainably grow production capacity in the coming years.

“NNPC Limited is championing concerted efforts in partnership with host communities and private stakeholders to address the security and environmental challenges in the Niger Delta to further fortify production growth. Suffice to say we have already begun seeing significant progress on the rebound. In September 2023, Nigeria recorded its highest crude oil and condensate output in nearly two years, reaching 1.72 million barrels per day. This, we believe, is just the beginning of our production rebound.”

She affirmed that in addition to sustainably growing upstream production volumes, NNPC Limited is also increasing its participation in the downstream sector in line with a ‘wells-to-wheels’ approach, taking the country’s unique hydrocarbon molecules as close as possible to end-users.

The vehicle for this, she said, is the restructured NNPC Trading Company, focused on growing NNPC’s presence in the global market for crude, condensate, gas, and petroleum products.

The Argus Crude European Crude Conference Panel Session was held with the theme, ‘The Invisible Hand: How Are Shareholders and Asset Managers Meeting the Crude Industry? What Does This Mean for the Future of Crude in Europe?’

Vice President Crude of Argus, James Gooder, moderated the event.