 First, let me thank the chair of the all producers trade section of the LCCI and other members of the executive for the very kind invitation to join you at this 60th anniversary celebration. As you've been told, I was here in 2017 as keynote speaker when the OPTS turned 55. And I noticed that I'm not the only one who has added more gray hair since then, as some says on account of the challenges in the industry. But I think by now I should also deserve to be some kind of honorary member of the OPTS by some arrangement. Let me say that the OPTS deserves to be commended for its outstanding role in the growth and development of our oil and gas sector in Nigeria. And as we've seen for the numerous social investment programs and development projects that have been undertaken by members through the years, well done indeed. I've been asked to speak on the topic Nigeria transitioning to green energy, Nigeria transitioning to green energy. Now, of course, this is a very wide subject. So what I will do this evening is only to attempt to highlight some of the problematic issues in that transition process. I think that we'll all agree that the most consequential subject globally in the next few decades and even now will possibly be climate change. Already it is evident from so many adverse climate occurrences, floods, desertification, rising water levels, record high temperatures that there is clearly a global climate crisis. But the obvious, even if difficult solution to the crisis is to stop carbon emissions and to use green energy. The staple wisdom is that coal and fossil fuels are major pollutants. That being the case, it is proposed that countries and corporations should gradually reduce the use of these high pollutants and instead use renewable energy such as solar, wind, hydro and completely stop the use of these carbon emitters by the agreed target date of 2050. Now most countries, including Nigeria, of course agree that we must reduce global emissions to zero. In our case, our target is 2060. We are major victims of the effects of climate change as everyone else. But there are a few important issues that we have flagged to our wealthier brother countries in the global north who want to move at a quick pace towards the targets that have been set. The first is that we in the developing world are faced with two, not one existential crisis. One is climate change. The other is extreme poverty. The cause and consequence of which is energy poverty or the fact that the lack of access to electricity for millions is a cause of the deepening poverty in many developing countries, especially African countries. The second point that we have made to them is that African countries are the least emitters of carbon today. Less than 1% of the cumulative carbon dioxide emissions and even if we triple electricity consumption in African countries, aside from South Africa solely through the use of natural gas, this would just add 0.6% to global emissions. So a lot of the flooding and adverse weather events that we're experiencing here are from emissions caused by wealthier countries, clearly not by our own emissions. The third point that we have made is that the defunding of gas projects and this of course I'm sure many of us are aware that proposals have been made to defund gas projects in several countries of the world, the EU and several multilaterals have bought into this proposal. But at the point we've made is that the defunding of gas projects in order to force gas rich countries like Nigeria to stop using gas and use renewables instead is faulty. These proposals to ban the funding of fossil fuel projects make no distinction between upstream oil and coal exploration and gas and power plants for grid balancing and no distinction whatsoever. Also no economy in the world has yet been known to use renewables solely to industrialise. Solar power simply does not have the base load capacity yet for industry. The fourth point that we have made is that stopping the use of gas means that we cannot even use LPG for clean cooking to replace the use of kerosene, firewood and charcoal which are debtier fuels by far and widely used for cooking and other domestic purposes particularly in our rural areas. The use of firewood of course means deforestation, cutting down trees and of course desertification and the loss of our carbon sinks. By the way our carbon sinks are possibly the best in the world. Much more effective than carbon sinks in the Amazon and several other parts of the world. The fifth is the double standards that welfare countries have adopted on this issue. Today in the wake of the energy crisis many European nations have made announcements to increase or extend their use of coal fired power generation through 2023 and potentially beyond. Now these were coal plants that were at some point said to have been decommissioned but the moment an energy crisis arose these decommissioned plants were quickly brought back into use. Now this is in violation of their climate commitments and all the analysis suggests that this will raise power sector emissions of the EU by 4% a significant amount given the high based denominator of EU emissions in the first place. The sixth and perhaps most crucial point is for us that we must take quick and informed actions in our national interest. We must take the threat of no investments in the fossil fuel sector including gas seriously. We simply must take it seriously. For an example many European and other global north countries are setting very aggressive targets for the use of electric vehicles and of course we know that that means the banning or the non-use of combustion engine vehicles. Soon there may only be a few countries using combustion engines. It's also evident that the Russian-Ukrainian conflict has shown again the double standards in not allowing public funding for fossil fuel projects. The wealthier nations are still of the view that this is the correct policy and that even if public funding is to be allowed financing should not go beyond 2035. So far our own response and by that I mean Nigeria's response has been the energy transition plan which is a comprehensive data-driven and evidence-based plan. It's designed to deal with the twin crisis of climate change and energy poverty. We anchored the plan on certain key objectives including lifting 100 million people out of poverty in a decade, driving economic growth and bringing modern energy services to the full population and managing the expected long-term job losses in the oil and gas sector due to global carbonization. Given these objectives the plan recognizes the role that natural gas must play in the short term and medium term to facilitate the establishment of base load energy capacity and to address the nation's clean cooking deficit in the form of LPG. Gas is of course critical to integrating a greater share of renewable energy in Nigeria's energy mix. Also natural gas methane is an important chemical of its stock especially for ammonia production for fertilizers and we heard Dr Swili talk about the various other very important uses of gas and fossil fuels generally. To achieve these objectives by 2060 we will need 410 billion US dollars or 10 billion dollars per annum above business as usual spending. Where do we get this from? In addition to conventional capital flows from both public and private sector sources local and international we have made the case that we should be on the G7 climate partners list which should attract significant funding and the past few weeks of health meetings with the president of the World Bank, the US Treasury secretary, the US special envoy on climate change and the subject of our discussions of course have been on how to ensure that Africa's largest economy and of course one of the biggest producers of fossil fuels is funded to transit in a manner that would work, in a manner that makes sense. South Africa for example got about over 8 billion dollars in order to decommission some of their coal plants and we say that you cannot talk about a transition without adequate funding and again we've made the point repeatedly that we are not at all the worst emitters and even if we triple, even quadruple our energy use today will still be the least emitters of carbon dioxide and the least pollutants. So I think that it's also essential that we participate more fully in the global carbon finance market in addition to all of our other expectations for funding for the transition. We simply have to participate more fully. In all of the various resources available the global finance market is one. I think that voluntary carbon markets can play a significant role in directing private capital into climate action. Now how do they work? How do these carbon markets work? A developer typically sets up a project that avoids certain emissions for example methane capture from landfills or removes carbon from the atmosphere by reforestation and it's been suggested also that the replacement of diesel generators or generators generally with solar power or with some other clean energy would also be an eligible project. The project is then registered under a standard VCS, a gold standard and validation and verification is done by an independent body. The carbon credits equivalent to the mitigation that has been achieved are then issued to the project subject to verification. The developer then sells the carbon credits to companies, to governments or individuals that are seeking to compensate or neutralize their emissions. Some of these companies include airlines and you know, countries and we've seen a few Nigerian companies that have already been doing some lucrative carbon avoidance or removal projects that have yielded significant carbon credits. Amazon Energy, I was discussing with them a couple of days ago, were contracted to do a gas flare down project for an IOC in Kuala area and the IOC utilized the carbon emissions reduction for carbon credits and it was a very significant, a very significant carbon credit transaction. Also given the escalating debt situations of many developing countries including Nigeria, especially in the aftermath of COVID-19 and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I think we should also bring debt for climate swaps into the climate finance mix. The debt for climate swaps are a type of debt swap where bilateral or multilateral debt is forgiven by creditors in exchange for a commitment by the debtor to use outstanding debt service payments for some national climate action programs. The creditor can use the transaction as a contribution to its own nationally determined contributions, in other words the win-win situation for debtor and creditor. So we can increase the fiscal space for climate related investments and reduce our debt burden at the same time. So let me conclude by saying that I think that the private sector must up its participation in the transition to green energy journey and in particular the OPTS, I think that you must be involved more actively in the conversations. So just three ways, the first of course is greater investment, greater involvement in the conversations about what an economically just transition to zero emissions should actually look like. And that conversation is going on practically everywhere. But we think that the Nigerian contribution to that conversation will be greatly enriched by the participation of the OPTS. The second is the implementation of the energy transition plan. For example, the off-grid solar space in Nigeria is becoming one of the most exciting anywhere in the world. We have programs such as the federal government solar and Niger program where we are targeting 25 million connections, five million solar home connections including off-grid mini-grids. And that will give 25 million individuals power. That is the solar and Niger program. I have made considerable progress with past the one million mark already. Then we have the Nigerian electrification program with the World Bank Group, the AFDB and the Rural Electrification Fund. That's almost a billion dollars in financing and subsidies to drive another 10 million solar connections. We are also working on clear guidelines for on-grid solar before COP 27 in November to initially provide the structure for the rollout of at least a thousand megahertz of solar power. And we are particularly pleased with the good work that all on and connexer have been doing with funding from Shell, one of the key OPTS members. We also have the NNPC partnering with the Rural Electrification Agency to roll out solar mini-grids and solar home systems across the country. So I really would like to encourage the OPTS to take the lead in solar, to help drive improvements in our energy mix and also to accelerate the transition to energy companies and not just oil and gas companies. And three, getting involved in the climate finance, the thinking around climate finance especially the voluntary carbon markets, et cetera. So I must again thank the OPTS for the honour of joining this landmark celebration and I wish you a happy 60th anniversary and more useful decades of service to the industry and to our nation. Thank you very much.