Nigeria and Spain have voiced their readiness to strengthen their bilateral trade ties in every sector of the Oil and Gas Industry, the new Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Maikanti Kachalla Baru (photo, right), revealed. He stated this during the visit of the Spanish Ambassador to Nigeria, Alfonso Barnuevo (photo, left), to the NNPC Towers in Abuja.

According to Baru, NNPC is currently experiencing transformation which includes boosting the Corporation’s refining capacity.He said the Corporation intends to work together with the Spanish National Oil Company, REPSOL, to improve the technical capacities of the refineries for the benefit of the two countries.

“As you know, we have challenges with our refineries and with REPSOL refining about 900,000 barrels of crude oil per day, we can collaborate on that, going forward. While we are fixing our refineries, we also have the opportunity to bring in more petroleum products into the country to meet our domestic needs,” he said.

The Group Managing Director (GMD) added that NNPC is in partnership with some Spanish companies in the area of Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) and wish to boost safer energy use in the country through the promotion of LPG consumption. NNPC was also working on the Trans Sahara Gas Pipeline Project and will rely on the technical support of some Spanish companies to resolve the challenges of gas supply.

For his part the Spanish Ambassador to Nigeria, Alfonso Barnuevo, said Nigeria and Spain have an established friendly relationship dating back to over 30 years ago and “this visit is to further strengthen these good ties between our nations and in particular, between NNPC and REPSOL.”He added that Spain is Nigeria’s 2nd best client in the area of oil and gas, as it currently purchases about £ 4.6billion worth of oil and gas from Nigeria.

“Therefore, NNPC and REPSOL will benefit tremendously from sustaining this collaboration,” he told Africa Business Communities.

Anita Fatunji