Posted by By Charles Ozoemena on
ABUJA - PRESIDENT Olusegun Obasanjo yesterday in Abuja announced that a gas pricing policy would be ready by early next month.....
ABUJA - PRESIDENT Olusegun Obasanjo yesterday in Abuja announced that a gas pricing policy would be ready by early next month.
He made the revelation while receiving a delegation from ENI, the parent company of Nigerian Agip Oil Company Limited in State House Abuja. The President said that a comprehensive gas pricing policy would put an end to the current ad hoc pricing system.
He commended Agip for taking the lead in the Independent Power Production (IPP) programme of the Federal Government and urged other gas producing companies to emulate Agip.
'Thank you for breaking the jinx in the IPP sector", he said, while also expressing delight that the company had done a lot in the training of indigenous staff.
President Obasanjo reiterated the determination of his Administration to wisely invest the country's oil revenue for sustainable development.
'We have to use what we have to get what we want" he said, stressing that 'we will use oil, and gas to improve power, transportation, fertilizer production among other national needs."
The Chief Executive Officer of the Rome-based ENI, Mr. Paolo Scaroni, while commending the reform programme of the Administration which he said had restored investor-confidence in the country, stressed that with over 40 years presence in Nigeria, the country was strategic to ENI.
Mr. Scaroni said that his company would invest over $8 billion in Nigeria in the next five years.
Meanwhile President Olusegun Obasanjo said Tuesday in Abuja that Nigeria would continue to support the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries Fund for International Development (OFID).
At an audience in State House with a four-man delegation of the Fund led by its Director-General, Mr. Suleiman Al-Herbish, the President who recalled that he was a military leader in Nigeria when the Fund was founded in 1976 in order to cushion the harsh effects of the high oil price on low-income countries, noted that OFID had played a wonderful role.