By Mordi chukwunonso Esther
The Department of Petroleum Resources, DPR, revealed plans to automate and commence remote monitoring, registration and accreditation of petroleum products depots and retail outlets and the entire downstream oil and gas industry, with the launch of the newly established Downstream Remote Monitoring Systems (DRMS).
This was disclosed by Head, Public Affairs of the DPR, Paul Osu, in a statement in Abuja. Ossu said the newly established Downstream Remote Monitoring Systems would become operational, December 1, 2020, after the launch in Abuja.
He explained that the DRMS is a web-based solution designed to provide intelligent regulatory and inventory management system for petroleum products supply and distribution from depot to retail outlets.
Osu added that the system was also designed as a regulatory tool to monitor retail outlets and depot activities.
He said: “Other features of the application includes retail outlets accreditation and re-registration, nationwide automated product inventory management, retail outlets coordinate recording for mapping purposes and transactions management and report generation of dealers nationwide.
“The establishment of DRMS is another strategic initiative of DPR to continue to create opportunities and enable business in the oil and gas industry in Nigeria.”
The DPR had a few months back, launched the National Production Monitoring System, NPMS, another online platform that is designed to help the agency accurately monitor national crude oil production and exports, through the provision of a system for direct and independent acquisition of production data from oil and gas facilities in Nigeria to ensure timely and accurate reporting of production figures and export data.
The NPMS replaced the current paper-based report and ensure ready production reporting to the Federal Inland Revenue Service, FIRS and the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, NEITI, and other agencies.
NPMS, the DPR had stated, was envisaged to empower it to better determine the royalty payable and issue demand notice on companies, while it would help the nation to better predict the performance of oil and gas reservoirs and therefore better production forecasting.
The NPMS includes facilities for the DPR to exercise surveillance, perform production monitoring, and to be able to utilise the production data for analysis and forecasting.
In addition, the DPR had stated that access to the collated data was also available to authorized DPR personnel, operators and other relevant stakeholders.
The underlying strength of the NPMS, the DPR noted, was to further ensure its ability to accurately determine the exact revenue accruing to Nigeria from the oil and gas sector, while also providing a modern and reliable technology for fiscalisation of crude.
To this end, the DPR had directed all oil-producing companies to submit production data through the portal forthwith to enable it affect a comprehensive real-time reporting of the nation’s daily production status to the government.
