NCDMB Takes Campaign of Enlightenment to Okrika
The Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board, NCDMB, has engaged the womenfolk in Okochiri, Okrika Local Government Area of Rivers State, in an enlightenment drive aimed at raising awareness on the Nigerian Oil and Gas Industry Content Development, NOGICD, Act, 2010, and its benefits to communities and the nation.
Speaking at the one-day event in the Okochiri Ultra-modern Town Hall, the General Manager, of Corporate Communication and Zonal Coordination, NCDMB, Mrs. Angela Okoro, said the NOGICD Act seeks to enhance indigenous participation in every segment of the oil and gas industry value chain, and that women must get meaningfully involved for the greater good of society.
She stated that the act mandates the Board to “build the capacities of Nigerians” in appropriate skill sets and develop their capabilities in diverse areas inclusive of operational assets to enable them to compete effectively with expatriates and foreign companies in the industry.
According to her, over 16,000 Nigerians have been trained and duly certified in vocational fields, which include metal machining, welding, and pipe fitting, as well as Information and Communication Technology, ICT, among several others. Graduates of various academic disciplines have also undergone training in entrepreneurship and also remedial programmes for those with engineering-related backgrounds.
She said the NCDMB, which is the industry regulator, has undertaken numerous initiatives, most of which are contained in its ‘Nigerian Content 10-Year Strategic Road Map,’ which was launched in 2017 to enhance domestication and domiciliation of oil and gas operations.
She urged the women to key into the Board’s capacity-building programmes by accessing the NCDMB database through the Nigerian Oil and Gas Industry Content Joint Qualification System, NOGIC-JQS, for essential information on training and job opportunities in the industry, and follow the procedures set out there.
To underscore the importance the Board attaches to such targeted capacity-building and empowerment schemes, she declared: “If you train a woman in a skill, you train a nation, A woman stands for everybody.”
Okoro also drew the attention of the women to the NCDMB’s Community Content Guideline, which embodies what host communities of oil and gas companies could legitimately expect from operations taking place within their areas in terms of employment and human capital development, project office, and community office, and procurement of goods and services, among other things.
The Guideline states, for instance, that all operations and projects above $100 million or duration above 2 years shall open and maintain a project office in the catchment area as part of the project organization.
Regarding employment, the Guideline stipulates that all unskilled job roles be exclusively reserved for indigenes of the host community or communities where a project is domiciled and that at least 50% of semi-skilled job roles be exclusively reserved for indigenes of the host community.
Okoro advised the women to organize themselves in groups according to their vocations and trades to be able to speak with one voice in interactions with companies and contractors doing business in their respective communities.
She pointed out that there is also a Nigerian Content Intervention Fund, NCIF, established by the NCDMB to aid indigenous companies with financing, which is being managed by the Bank of Industry, BOI.
The community women, through a spokesperson, expressed profound appreciation to the NCDMB for the interaction afforded them through the event and assured that the information and guidance provided would be put to use.
In the entourage of the General Manager to the sensitisation/enlightenment event were Chief Dallas Asangolo, NCDMB Zonal Coordinator for Rivers and Bayelsa States, and his counterpart for Abia and Imo States, Dr. Emma Ohanyere.
Beyond Revoking Dormant Oil Leases
Nigeria is oil and oil is Nigeria. No doubt about it. As Africa’s top producer and the world’s 11th largest pumper of crude oil, Nigeria is in a vantage position to make news in the continental and international arenas.
It did so this week when the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum and Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) which replaced the Department of Petroleum Resources in the aftermath of the reforms by Petroleum Industry Act (PIA,) said it planned to revoke oil exploration leases that had been lying dormant since they were granted. The leasees include Nigerian and international oil companies.
“Based on the PIA, the commission is focused on delivering value for the nation so only firms that are technically and financially viable will keep their leases,” NUPRC Chief Executive Officer, Gbenga Komolafe said. The definition of “technical and financial viability” simply means companies that are making efforts to explore or produce oil or gas in their leases.
Data from the NUPRC indicates that some 53 exploration leases were issued from 2003 till date, of which over 60 per cent, that is around 33 have expired.
The Commission is no longer in the mood to allow these leases to gather dust on the shelves of these local and foreign firms and wants to re-award them “subject to specific terms and conditions.” The PIA which was enacted in August 2021 empowers the NUPRC to assess the technical and financial status of leases so the body is perfectly within its legal remit.
On the face of it, the matter looks simple and straightforward. If a company is awarded an oil lease, it should take steps to explore and produce and add to Nigeria’s overall production and enable the country to earn more money to finance development.
The operator will also earn money. So where is the complication? This is an important question the NUPRC and Nigerians should ask because the companies we are talking about are not a dozen-a-dime operators. One of them, TotalEergies, was ranked the 6th biggest oil company in the world as of May this year.
If a Supermajor won’t have money to do its 9-to-5 business, who would? It must be one of two reasons: The field is a marginal producer in which case the company decides it does not make commercial sense to develop it.
The second reason may have to do with circumstances beyond the operator’s control: Insecurity. The NUPRC may find it easier to deal with the first case but the second one is quite serious and goes beyond just cancelling an idle lease because a new operator will face the same challenge.
All is not well with Nigeria or its oil industry. Nigeria’s current oil production comes from 323 onshore and offshore fields. Investments in the sector have suffered as IOCs abandon onshore and shallow water assets due to increasing insecurity and sabotage of oil assets.
The Niger Delta which is the hub of oil exploration activities has seen armed gangs and cult groups operate with impunity with the 31 million inhabitants of the region held as collective hostages.
The story is the same with crude oil theft. Last year, the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) reported that “Nigeria lost a total of 619.7 million barrels of crude oil valued at $46.16 billion or N16.25 trillion to crude oil theft between 2009 to 2020.”
In October this year, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) gave a sense of the scale of the challenge when it confirmed 149 crude theft incidents in just one week. These are not small boys looking for peanuts. NNPCL disclosed that, in one camp in Imo State, “CCTV cameras have been installed on trees by the thieves to look out for security operatives.
Mortar launchers and defence systems were also mounted by the oil thieves in various locations to eliminate any perceived enemy.” In another camp in Rivers State, crude oil thieves used “a horizontal directional drilling machine” to construct a “tunnel underneath the tarred road to insert their illegal connection.”
Given these dire conditions it will take a deaf, dumb and blind operator to invest their hard-earned money in an oil lease and we know oil people are neither of these. This is why the Federal Government must talk and act seriously when it comes to operating conditions in the Niger Delta.
Indeed, the challenge in the Delta is two-fold: Poverty and criminality. The efforts by government at all levels, federal, state and local to develop the oil bearing region must be matched by law enforcement. We must have a safety net to catch the poor and the law to deal with criminals.
Nigeria needs no further justification to get it right in oil. After days of intense negotiations, the 36th Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and non-OPEC ministerial meeting agreed to increase Nigeria’s oil production quota in 2024 to 1.5 million barrels per day from the current 1.38 million.
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The figure falls short of President Bola Tinubu’s forecast of 1.78 million barrels per day in the 2024 budget. Nigeria, which currently produces 1.5 million bpd of crude. Although Nigeria produces an additional 300,000 bpd of condensate which is not subject to OPEC quota restrictions, the country has not been able to meet its OPEC quota for the past three years with ominous implications for the future.
Nigeria needs more money; Nigeria needs to produce more oil; Nigeria needs to work more to realise its oil dreams. We should not be content with revoking dormant licenses; we must understand why leases stay idle. This will help us to determine an operator who is not working by choice or not working by force.
