Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has surpassed its supply target for the Gas-to-Power project which was embarked upon by the government to increase power generation and drive economic development in the country.

According to BusinessDay, Group Managing Director of NNPC, Andrew Yakubu stated at a conference in Abuja that the corporation is “in surplus of gas availability to power in line with the Federal Government’s power initiative.”

He added that the strategic focus of his administration is to achieve sufficient gas supply for power generation from about 70 to 80 percent of gas produced in the country.

In March, the state-owned corporation’s Group Executive Director, Dr. David Ige, disclosed Nigeria produced 7.8 billion cubic feet (cbf) of gas daily with 15 percent flared daily, making the country the second largest gas flarer in the world, after oil-rich Russia. According to him, only 12 percent (0.9bcf/d) of Nigeria’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) was consumed locally for power or industrial purposes.

Yakubu revealed NNPC has made significant investments to reduce gas flaring in the country to ground zero, noting that so far, the corporation has achieved a 15 percent reduction.

The Minister of Petroleum Resources,  Diezani Alison-Madueke, has put in place aggressive commercial framework which has gone a long way attracting investment to the oil and gas sector of the economy.

The NNPC boss also disclosed the corporation is executing plans to grow the nation’s crude oil reserves and daily crude oil production to 40 billion barrels and 4 million barrels per day, respectively, by 2020.

Nigeria, the world’s sixth largest oil producer and Africa’s largest producer, produces over 2 million barrels of oil per day.