Stakeholders parley on declining oil reserves, poor standards

Declining hydrocarbon reserves coupled with failing oil production owing to reduced exploration activities would be the focus of oil and gas industry stakeholders at the special management workshop taking place this week, the Nigerian Association of Petroleum Explorationists (NAPE) has said.

The association at a press conference last week said it was worried that the Federal Government’s goals of reaching 40 billion barrels and four million barrels per day production by 2010 had yet to be realised.

It also maintained that the issues and challenges of oil and gas production accounting and questions bordering on metering in the Nigerian oil and gas industry have become topical in the face of incessant pipeline vandalism and production curtailment.

Commenting on why the association is having the workshop, Adedoja Ojelabi, the president of NAPE, said the challenges facing the sector were causing huge setback for the operators and government, hence the intervention.

To this end, she said NAPE at its special management workshop would be examining the effectiveness of the existing policies to drive the growth in the oil and gas industry, as well as the development of road maps and new policy initiatives on oil and gas production and metering in the Nigerian oil and gas landscape.

The theme of the workshop slated for Lagos on July 2, is ‘Fluiding Accounting and Metering Issues in the Nigerian Oil and Gas Industry.’
The NAPE boss said, “The theme chosen for the special workshop is especially relevant in the light of recent public discourse on concerns on accuracy of production volumes due to pipeline sabotage, and other causes as well as questions regarding the efficacy of the metering system in our industry; including the nation’s hydrocarbon production, reporting process and stewardship. Couple with these complex operations interplay, is a potentially emerging concern on fiscalisation model of the nation’s hydrocarbon production”.