NCDMB Leverages On Opportunities In NOGIC

To leverage on the opportunities presented by the Nigerian Oil and Gs Industry Content Act (NOGIC Act), the Nigerian Content Development Monitoring Board (NCDMB) has designed an implementation model geared towards achieving increase capacity in the nation’s oil and gas industry.

The Board noted that the NOGIC Act had provided the needed platform to build in-country capacity and monitor the industry for a robust Nigeria content growth.

“In this regard, we have broadly delineated capacity development, facility and equipment on one hand and manpower as well as skills development in the other”, it pointed out.

The Executive Secretary of the NCDMB, Engr. Ernest Nwapa  made the disclosure in a paper titled, The Impact of Nigerian Content Act on Indigenous Capacity: The Journey So Far”, at a one-day technical conference organised by Energy correspondents in Lagos recently.

The facilities would provide opportunity for high-level in-country operations like FPSO integration, ship building maintenance.

According to him, the earlier challenge was that most of the field development contracts for the earlier discovered offshore fields were already completed before the NOGIC Act was enacted in 2010 but added that with the instrumentality of the Act, a window of opportunity in an ongoing project had been identified and had opened discussions with a major IOC to leverage the project.

The building of in-country pipe mill capacity, he stressed is a vital area  listed for urgent attention for which the Act was enacted adding that the Petroleum minister at the inception of the board, mandated it to ensure that three to four pipe mills were established in the country by 2014 in order to meet the industry’s transportation demands and services.

In accordance with the mandate, Nwapa said the board is talking with Jiangsu Yulong, a Chinese steel pipe mill to establish shops in Nigeria, adding that the project will boost steel pipe production by 250,000 tonnes annually in line with the objective of achieving full capacity in steel pipe production.

The NCDMB executive secretary who noted that ownership of equipment is core to credible Nigeria Content development added that the board will give exclusive considerations to indigenous service providers on ownership of equipment even discussed with some service companies.

Also developed, according to him, is human capacity model which depends on the training of young Nigerians to fit into various skills, disclosing that over 1,600 engineers were trained with the collaboration of PTDF and others even as another 150 Nigerians have also undergone projects attachments  for practical experience in fabrication yards and engineering design companies.

Vivian-Peace Nwinaene