The Federal Government announced on Monday that plans were in top gear to deploy technology that would track and account for every molecule of crude oil produced in Nigeria by 2019.

It also stated that investment requests by multinational oil firms seeking to invest in the country’s oil and gas sector were currently in excess of $15bn.

In the latest podcast message obtained by our correspondent in Abuja on achievements in the past two years, deliveries of the present and key expectations for the future, the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Ibe Kachikwu, said new fiscal policies in the oil sector would expand government’s income by $9bn in the long term.

On crude tracking, he said the government was working out measures that would ensure that it monitored every molecule of crude oil and refined products.

The minister stated, “We are putting together an IT platform that will enable us to do this; we are working with the DPR (Department of Petroleum Resources) and hopefully by 2019, the issue of whether we could not account for our crude will no longer occur.

“We are planning our marginal fields’ rounds and we are planning our inland basins rounds. It is going to be a transparent process to bring people to get us more oil. The rules are going to be out soon once they are approved by the President.”

The minister added, “We were able to exit the joint venture cash call. Still a bit of things to be ironed out there, but for the first time, multinationals began to have belief in their need to invest in the country. The amount of investment requests we are seeing from joint venture cash call members is today in excess of $14bn-$15bn, which is for the purpose of projects like Zabazaba, Bonga extension programmes and all that.

“Multinationals are beginning to have confidence that this system is working. We delivered an open NNPC, a lot of work still needs to be done there.

“We are going to be rolling out our fiscal policies, which are now waiting FEC approval. Those fiscal policies will expand income in the short term over $2bn a year to the Federal Government; but on a long term, over $9bn.”

Kachikwu said the government would further deepen its engagement with citizens from the Niger Delta, adding, “Next week, I am going back there to talk to the governors of the region, the oil companies and to put a seed to some of the agreements we have made.”

He stated that the government would like to hit 2.2 million barrels of crude production subject to OPEC constraints and noted that the ministry would fix all infrastructure essential for this.