Excerpt of the press conference
The Theme for the conference ``The Gulf of Guinea: Sustaining the Momentum of World Class Resources Development’’ is quite appropriate at this time, more so as the west Africa sub-region is currently facing the challenges of increasing its Offshore activities with a view to realizing the potentials of the oil and gas sector.
With the crop of discussants during the conference, I am convinced that a lot of ideas and recommendations would emanate from the conference that would point the ways forward for the various challenges currently facing the West African sub-region in the oil and gas sector in terms of sustaining the tempo of crude exploration and production.
Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen, as you are aware, offshore activities in West African sub-region have witnessed tremendous growth over the last four decades. There is however still available avenues to further improve the potentials of oil and gas resources in the fast evolving region.
The traditional areas of oil exploration and production in West Africa have been on land and shallow water of the gulf of Guinea. In Nigeria, the earlier successes were mainly recorded in the Niger Delta basin. That has since changed.
The drive to increase the Nigerian national reserve base and production capacity to 40 billion barrels and four million barrels per day respectively by the year 2010 has led to the increase in the exploration activities and opening of other frontier areas to the search for oil and gas as follows:
1.     Deepwater and ultra deepwater areas.
2.     Shallow water offshore development areas.
3.     Gas development.
4.     Marginal field development.
More than ever before, the Offshore West Africa must rely on innovative technology to be able to sustain and even surpass the current tempo of exploration and production. The OWA 2008 will showcase some of the new and improved technologies that have the capabilities to facilitate the sustenance of the current tempo of oil and gas activities in the Gulf of Guinea. The mission of OWA among others is to provide an annual forum that addresses the technical, environmental and business challenges associated with oil and gas exploration and production offshore.
The conference provides the only unique multi country networking opportunity for attendees to share technology and address issues with experts in their respective fields and to gain an understanding of the changes that are taking place within those technologies.
The conference encourages the growth of local content within the industry and the development of young professionals. New comers to the industry have found OWA to be a platform to quickly gain an understanding of key deepwater technologies and issues.
The annual Offshore West Africa and Exhibition remains the leading source of information on new technology and operating expertise for deepwater and subsea market. It is also the most significant offshore Africa deepwater technology event in the world.
In conclusion, I want to assure you that Nigeria will continue to support the programme given its benefits. I want to also thank all the resource persons from within and outside Nigeria who have continued to play a major role in sustaining the good standard of the programme.