The Minister of State Petroleum Resources (Oil), Heineken Lokpobiri, yesterday called on the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to invest in Nigeria’s decaying oil and gas pipeline infrastructure, some of which were built over 60 years ago.
Speaking when he received the ambassador of the UAE to Nigeria, Salem Al Shamsi and his team in his office in Abuja, the minister explained that the oil business remains one of the most lucrative in the world, assuring the country of good returns on investment.
Nigeria has over 5,000 kilometres of ageing oil pipeline infrastructure across the country, which is hardly put into use currently.
The deteriorating infrastructure has also had negative impact on people and the environment, sometimes resulting in oil spills. Whereas in other countries, pipelines are used to transport crude oil as well as petroleum products, in Nigeria tankers are deployed in moving products around the country, with their attendant impact on the roads as well as addition to cost of doing business. Even in the upstream, operators had recently resorted to the use of barges because the pipelines have become very unreliable. But as two important members of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), Lokpobiri stated that both nations share a lot in common.
