A University teacher, Prof. Mike Onyekonwu has called on the Federal Government and Nigerian engineers to invest more on research in order to take the lead in world oil and gas reserves.
Onyekonwu who is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Petroleum Engineering, University of Port Harcourt made the all in a paper titled: “Adding Value Through Research: A Case of the Oil and Gas Industry.” was presented at the technical section of a monthly meeting of the Nigerian Society of Engineers (NSE), Port Harcourt branch recently said Africa and Nigeria were major players in the world’s oil and gas industry, but yet there are no research centres.
According to him, “oil and gas is one of the most commonly used and important commodities in the world,” adding that “Africa and Nigeria can add value to the oil and gas industry through research by collaborating between the oil and gas industry, academia and government to the benefit of all the parties involved.”
He noted that there were several research areas of interest to the oil and gas industry in Nigeria if the billions of dollars and naira were spent in research and development for energy.
The university lecturer also maintained that there were several achievements of research in the oil and gas industry in Africa and Nigeria, and frowned that research in this areas had been neglected; stressing that the way forward is a collaborative effort by the industry, government and the academia to key in for the benefit of all.
Onyekonwu further stated that, “value can be added in quantity or in quality research find-facts, fuel knowledge and solves problems as  value can be added to the oil and gas industry through research.”
The oil and gas industry has three sectors, it provides more than 50 percent of the world’s energy and is very important,” he opined.
The Professor in Department of Petroleum Engineering in University of Port Harcourt also explained that the three key areas of oil and gas industry include upstream sector which has to do with exploration and production, and midstream is for transportation, refining and processing while downstream sector has to do with distribution and retail sales, and harped that time has come for research into the sector more.

Collins Barasimeye