Nigeria must exploit oil/gas resources for benefit of citizens — Petroleum Minister

The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources (oil), Senator Heineken Lokpobiri, on Wednesday, tasked all stakeholders and experts in Nigeria’s oil and gas industry to leverage all petroleum resources for the benefit of the citizens.

Lokpobiri spoke at the 3rd African Local Content Roundtable, with the theme: “Fostering Local Content in Africa for Africans” organised by the Heritage Times in Abuja.

He said, “We recognize the immense economic and social impact that hydrocarbon reserves hold. With an estimated 125 billion barrels of oil equivalent the African continent collectively hosts about 10 percent of global hydrocarbon reserves.

“This is a significant asset base to drive development and it is our responsibility to exploit the oil and gas resources for the benefit of the citizens, business community and Governments of our respective countries”.

Lokpobiri noted that as African Petroleum Producers’ Organizations, APPO, member countries, Africa must leverage lessons learnt from member countries and other parts of the world to adopt leading practices in hydrocarbon development with a focus on in-country value addition, environmental sustainability, and optimization of intra- Africa trade.

According to him, “Nigeria, being one of the APPO member countries is very passionate about promoting local content development in the oil and gas industry and I believe the ES NCDMB will elaborate on our success story during his address.

“Suffice to say that the impact of local content in Nigeria has been cross-cutting and monumental, covering job opportunities for youths, development of oil service infrastructure such as Floating, Production, Storage and Offloading (FPSO) integration yard, policy incentives that transformed ownership of marine assets in the hands of Nigerian companies, provision of equity investment support to catalyze new businesses, promoting home-grown technology through a structured support for Research and Innovation among several other socio-economic impacts”.

In his keynote address entitled: “Enhancing Local Content Development and Deployment in African Oil and Gas Industry” the Executive Secretary of the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board, NCDMB, Engr. Simbi Wabote emphasized the need for an enabling regulatory framework for local content to thrive.

He said, “The law must promote and enable investments rather than become a stumbling block to existing or new investors both locally and internationally. The law must factor in local peculiarities; the ‘copy and paste’ legal framework is often difficult to implement.

“No law is perfect. Better to put the law in place and amend the law as necessary rather than waiting to get total perfection”.

Wabote further opined that local content should not only be restricted to the oil and gas industry but made a National Agenda to cover various sectors of the economy.

Earlier in his welcome address, the APPO Secretary-General, Dr Omar Farouk Ibrahim, said Africa must collectively work together to solve challenges facing the oil and gas industry.