Senate panel to probe contracts awarded by IOCs in three years

The Senate Committee on Local Content has resolved to scrutinize contracts awarded by International Oil Companies (IOCs) operating in Nigeria over the past three years.

Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Local content said this when the leadership of Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB) appeared before the Committee on Wednesday.

She directed the leadership of the NCDMB to provide the committee with necessary documents on the contracts awarded and yet to be awarded,explaining that the essence is to ascertain if the IOCs have complied with the Nigeria Oil and Gas Industry Content Development Act on human capital development on human development.

The lawmaker noted that the law provides 3% be set aside for contracts from the worth of $1 million to $100 million; 2 % for contract worth, 100 to 500 million and 1% for contracts 500 million and above.

Senate wants IOCs to provide Nigerians with 1000 internship slots each

She further stated the Committee‘s resolve to write to all IOCs operating in Nigeria to provide 1000 internship slots for students every year.

According to her, 60% will be used for
And these money are to be used for institutional strengthening ;20 percent for auxiliary services, and 20%, for professional training.

“we will like to have details of the contracts and about to be awarded contracts of the oil and Gas companies from 2021 , 2022 and 2o23, such as ExxonMobil Mobil, shell chevron all the IOCs operating in Nigeria,’, she said.

“So we would have detailed information of all the contracts awarded in the past few years and those about to be awarded, so that we would ensure that these our foreign partners have complied with the act.

She regretted that these IOCs are developing capacity of students in other countries, while Nigerian students roam the street seeking for places to observe their compulsory internship programme.

“I spent the last few weeks researching the internship opportunities that are available for Nigerian students in the oil and gas sector and I found none. But if you search ExxonMobil internship, what will come up is the ExxonMobil USA internship with quite a number of opportunities to American students to strengthen their skills, participate in networking, and too even decide whether they are in the right career. So we would like to have internship for anigerian students provided by the IOCs

“It won’t be out of place if we request that 1000 internship slots are provided gy each company. Every year we would probably have internship opportunities available for students. We are going to write to all the oil companies to provide 1,000 opportunities per annum”, Akpoti-Uduaghan said.

She also urged the oil and gas sector to parcipate in skills and innovation such as the hackathons, noting that Chevron and ExxonMobil are doing quite a lot in Thailand.

“Total is supporting innovations in new energies in France. So we would like our own entrepreneurs to be greatly supported by the oil and gas companies”, she said.