“You cannot say you have energy when the people don’t have
access to it” – CEO, Kenyon International
The Founder/Chief Executive Officer of Kenyon International, Dr. Victor Ekpenyong has said that for a country to say it has energy, that energy must be accessible to the people.
Ekpenyong stated this during an exclusive interview with Majorwaves on the margins of the 2023 Nigeria International Energy Summit (NIES), which held in Abuja with the theme “Global Perspectives for a Sustainable Energy Future.”
Nigeria has about 37 billion barrels of proven oil reserves and about 209 trillion cubic feet (TCF) of proven gas reserves, but still suffers energy poverty.
The Kenyon boss said that to humanize energy, people need to feel the impact of the energy, adding that energy needs to be accessible and affordable.
“Humanizing energy, it has to be people centric. Energy needs to be brought closer to the people; people need to feel the impact of the energy, because energy needs to be accessible, energy needs to be affordable.
“If you can generate energy and people accept it, and people can afford it, that’s when you’ll say that you’re humanizing energy; that energy has gotten to the people. Because you cannot say that you have energy when the people don’t have access to it,” Ekpenyong said.
He identified technology, people, and processes as some of the challenges affecting humanizing energy in Nigeria.
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Touching on energy transition, Ekpenyong said that energy is not available, accessible, and affordable in Nigeria, adding that the country should look at how it can make energy available, accessible, and affordable, before it can transit to something cleaner.
“When you talk about transition into cleaner energy, we don’t even have the energy. So, what are we transitioning to?”, he questioned rhetorically.
According to him, the country has abundant coal reserve in Enugu, but there was no investment in coal because the foreign investors were more interested in oil, because of this, the resource is today lying untapped, while Nigeria continues to suffer energy poverty.
Citing China, India, and other countries as some of the countries still using coal to generate power, he stated that if these countries, which are more advanced than Nigeria are still using coal to generate power, Nigeria should not be cowed into the energy transition narrative when the country cannot access energy.
“And whatever we have that can guarantee us energy, we should invest in them. Because Africa is not contributing to global warming; it’s less than 2 percent. China, India, and the United States are the ones that top the list of people that are contributing to climate change.
“So, we need to make do with what we have, build our economy, before we can now transit to renewable energy,” he said.
Ekpenyong tasked the next administration to make energy accessibility a priority, noting that the manufacturing sector and other sectors of the country’s economy cannot thrive without adequate energy being made available, accessible, and affordable.
“We expect that the next government that is coming in must take the energy challenge and try to see how it can make energy accessible,” he stated.
On the role Kenyon is playing in the energy space, he said the company does a lot of capacity development, invests in schools, partners with schools and partners with professional bodies.
Kenyon International is one of the leading and fastest growing indigenous companies in the Nigerian oil and gas industry. The company was Incorporated in 2012 to solve all surface Wellhead and X-mass Tree challenges with best practices, quality service and with zero tolerance to safety violations.
