The price of crude oil continued its rise on Thursday, increasing to $113.06/barrel at 5.40pm Nigerian time, as the National Petroleum Investment Management Services projected that the demand for oil would continue to increase till 2050.
NAPIMS, a subsidiary of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, is the corporate services unit of NNPC mandated to manage the company’s upstream business.
The PUNCH reported on Wednesday that Brent, the crude against which Nigeria’s oil is priced, rose to $111.03/barrel. On Thursday, the commodity moved up further to $113.06/barrel, as the war by Russia in Ukraine entered its first week.
Speaking at the Nigeria International Energy Summit 2022, the Group General Manager, NAPIMS, Bala Wunti, said the products from fossil, particularly the demand for crude oil, would continue to grow.
He said, “You have nuclear also growing, natural gas will grow, the oil will grow. Up to the year 2050, the oil will continue to grow, obviously not at the one or two per cent that we used to know.
“Gas will continue to grow and it, therefore, means that up to 2050 hydrocarbons will continue to grow. So we better do something with the supply.
“When you look at the energy mix equation, we think over 50 per cent of the global energy will be met by hydrocarbon oil and gas.”
He added, “It is precisely about 52 per cent, and specifically when you talk about oil and gas, that will constitute almost 57 per cent. Therefore, for the world to think that they can ignore and overlook hydrocarbon, it is to put in place a recipe for social destabilisation.
“It is a recipe for bringing down development and growth, causing shortfall in energy supply and that’s why we need investments. However, the reality today is that there’s no investment.”
Wunti told delegates at the summit that Nigeria was sitting on 28 billion barrels of liquid oil reserves and about 160 trillion cubic feet of gas being managed by NAPIMS both in terms of liquid and gaseous forms.
“We manage 75 per cent of the nation’s hydrocarbon reserves,” he stated, adding that there was a need for robust investments in the sector to adequately take advantage of its potentials.
