From Business Day

Cote d’Ivoire prime minister is poised to increase its crude oil and gas production after a decade of turmoil. The country would boost oil production within five years to 200,000 barrels per day, rivaling neighbouring Ghana. If this ambition must be realised, the state-owned national oil company Petroci, which controls the upstream oil industry, no doubt has a significant role to play.

Daniel Gnangni, the man at the helm of affairs in Pet¬roci, must rise to the challenge of attracting investments to the country to ramp up exploration and production projects.

“In terms of the upstream oil sector, that is exploration and production, our priori¬ties are focused on increasing national production in the short term to reach at least 200,000 barrels of oil per day and 300 million cubic feet of natural gas per day,” Gnangni had recently affirmed in an interview.

He also stressed the need to promote the nation’s largely unexplored sedimentary basin in a more sustained manner to attract increasingly more investors to step up explora¬tion.

But beyond telling foreign investors about the enormous potentialities that the sedi¬mentary basin offers, Gnangni has the important task of reassuring them that the country is safe and can offer a favourable environment for

private investors within the scope of mutually beneficial partnerships.

Read more at Business Day