NNPC Diversifying Into Renewable Energy, Real Estate, Others — NNPC COO, Ventures

The Chief Operating Officer, Ventures  and Business Development,  Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Roland Ewubare, has said that the corporation is diversifying its income base by establishing some non -core businesses across different sectors of the economy to  cushion the effect of revenue downturns resulting from a  slowdown in oil activities.

Ewubare said this on Thursday on Arise News, while discussing  issues on the “NNPC Business Plans for 2020.”

 Ewubare said the corporation was  pursuing initiatives that would make NNPC more profitable. He said the corporation was planning to partner  private sector players in the renewable energy industry, housing industry, logistic industry as well as “creating centres of medical excellence” through building world class hospitals. 

“Like I said earlier, if you take a historical  timeline of oil and gas, you will know that it goes up in boom and bust cyclical waves so what most operators do is create other streams of revenue to manage and weather downturns. in NNPC, what we want to do is to create an energy company not just an oil and gas company, an energy company, that is why we are moving into renewable energy, we have an initiative around solar that is going on . We have got bio-fuel agreements with various states governments, just trying to achieve those programmes.

“Within NNPC itself, there are a  bunch of non -core businesses that we have that we are trying to make more profitable. NNPC is one of the biggest landlords in this country, here in Lagos, just behind Chevron. we bought about 90 hectares of land in a country where there is housing deficit. We have been able to collaborate with private developers to develop these sorts of assets. We have land in Kaduna, in Port Harcourt, all over the place. We have got hospitals and clinics all across the country.  Many of our citizens fly out on daily basis to  seek medical attention abroad. If we are able to create centres of medical excellence here, then  you begin to save all that foreign exchange  for the country.” 

Ewubare said if,  “We can find a medical company that wants to collaborate with us, we are happy to talk with them. If we find companies who want to work with us in developing housing estates for profit and help the country meet its housing deficits, by all means they are welcome. We talked about cost earlier, about 30% of our cost hovers around logistics, so we are now having a conversation with some of the biggest logistic providers in Nigeria to have NNPC become equity partners in their businesses. So there are all kinds of  initiatives we have in place currently at probation time level, when they mature fully, the Nigerian nation will see the benefits  of it,” he added.