Following Nigeria’s adoption of natural gas as its transition fuel, the country’s oil service companies have been urged to key into the Decade of Gas initiative by the Federal Government and develop capacity around the resource and other allied industries in the value chain.
This submission was made by Obi Uzu, managing director of Global Process and Pipeline Services Limited (GPPSL) while speaking during the panel session, “Competitive Landscape & Sustainable Development of In-Country Value Addition” at the just concluded Nigeria International Energy Summit (N.I.E.S 2022) in Abuja.
“It is important for our local oil service companies to build capacity around natural gas and the allied industries in the value chain which include power, petrochemical, fertilizer, pharmaceutical amongst others,” Uzu said. Adding that “building capacity for our local oil service companies should hinge on the process, plan, strategy, and resources.”
On the global response to the energy transition, he advised that the country should focus on developing enough capacity to exploit the remaining God-given hydrocarbon resources as the developed countries are already turning their back on fossil fuels.
The session, however, explored different in-country value addition scenarios critical to the robust enhancement of Nigeria’s oil and gas industry with the mission to encourage the use of local labour, goods, and services at different stages of the oil and gas value chain.
The plenary also noted that Nigeria has witnessed huge milestones and success stories in its local content journey which should be exported to other African countries with hydrocarbon resources.
“The success of the Nigerian Local Content intervention can be ascribed to the efforts of the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB) and its leadership.
“Nigeria’s local content experiment has become the poster boy of in-country value addition for other African countries with extractive resources,” he said.
Earlier in his keynote address for the session, Simbi Kesiye Wabote, executive secretary and chief executive of NCDMB said that Local Content is at the core of the prevailing energy mix.
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“Transitions will always be triggered once the level of locally available resources is depleted or threatened.
Also, she stated the only problem is forcing people to abandon their own locally available energy resources in pursuit of an agenda and timeline set by others.
Meanwhile, Elohor Aiboni, the managing director of Shell Nigeria Exploration and Production Company Limited (SNEPCO), in her own contribution, said that the pivot of local content should be to stimulate local manufacturing for homegrown solutions as that is the only way to drive down costs and stay competitive.
The session identified different scenarios that can incentivise and strengthen local participation, increase local employment and procurement of local goods, and how best the country ought to leverage its petroleum resources to generate sustained and inclusive in-country value.
