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, following Nigeria’s adoption of natural gas as its transition fuel.
This submission was made by the managing director of Global Process and Pipeline Services Limited (GPPSL), Engr. Obi Uzu, 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”, said Uzu.
He added that building capacity for local oil service companies should hinge on process, plan, strategy and resources.
The session explored different in-country value addition scenarios critical to 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 Africa 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,” Uzu said.
“Transitions will always be triggered once the level of locally available resource are depleted or threatened. The only problem is forcing people to abandon their own locally available energy resource in pursuit of agenda and timeline set by others,” said Wabote.
In her own contribution, the managing director of Shell Nigeria Exploration and Production Company Limited (SNEPCO), Mrs. Elohor Aiboni, said, 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.
Source: leadership
