A welcome innovation

With the coming of the facility, production volumes are expected to be accurately measured and properly accounted for; so is the strengthening of regulatory oversight, elimination of discrepancies in crude oil lifting figures, and the plugging of the leakages that have historically undermined government revenue from the petroleum sector.

Surely, for an industry historically plagued by production and revenue losses and transparency issues, the development, coming at this time, ought to be celebrated. We therefore commend the indigenous firm for developing the solution, thus helping to confront a problem that has tended to make the country a laughing stock among the comity of oil-producing and exporting countries.

Yet, milestone or not; the all-important question is how such a critical facility which enables in-country testing of metering equipment is only now coming 68 years after the first shipment of crude oil export began. Could it have been a case of lack of awareness or understanding of its importance by successive governments, or yet another instance of our officials’ penchant to outsource critical services to foreign entities at huge material costs to the treasury?

The interesting part is that the same question could actually be raised on virtually all aspects of the operations in the oil and gas sector despite the country’s avowed commitment to ensuring greater indigenous participation in the sector. Today, despite our best efforts since 2010 when the Local Content Act came into being, indigenous participation, technology transfer and job creation in the industry, remain somewhat disappointing when compared with what our peers in the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC, have achieved over the years.

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Although the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB) claims that local content in the petroleum industry has reached 56 per cent, the more specialised jobs in the upstream sector have remained almost an exclusive arena for foreign players. 

For us, the singular lesson, which can easily be drawn from the fintech space in which Nigeria has emerged as a global player of note is how much capacity actually lies within, waiting to be tapped. Going forward, we expect more of indigenous players coming on board to solve similar industry-specific problems as obtain in other parts of the world.

Moreover, with countless universities offering specialised courses in petroleum and other allied engineering degrees, not to talk of the flagship Petroleum Training Institute, Effurun, Delta State, –a prerequisite for joining OPEC, created in 1973 to train indigenous middle-level manpower to meet the labour force demands of the industry – it seems reasonable to imagine the abundance of requisite, albeit latent indigenous capacities that could be harnessed to solve a good number of the challenges plaguing the industry, whether it is oil spills or vandalisation.

 What is needed, perhaps more than ever, is collaboration between these institutions and the main actors in the oil and gas sector to address problems.