‘There is no need to duplicate training institution by IOCs’
The Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF) recently hosted a data workshop facilitated by resource persons from the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). The General Manager, Strategic Planning and Documentation of the PTDF, in this interview, explains how capacity development in the oil and gas sector is taking the lead.
What is the essence of the workshop?
By our mandate, the PTDF is an agency under the Ministry of Petroleum Resources established for capacity building in the oil and gas industry. If you are dealing with the oil and gas industry in Nigeria you must deal with OPEC because we are an important member of OPEC.
OPEC started this workshop by gathering participants from DPR, NNPC, CBN, Debt Management Office (DBO), NNRA and other agencies and bringing in middle level staff together to be trained by OPEC resource persons from their headquarters in Vienna.
The purpose of the workshop was to train people that will generate data on the oil and gas activities in Nigeria for use in OPEC and worldwide. For people that will be entrusted with such an important responsibility must be well trained and PTDF being a trainer in the oil and gas industry; it is most appropriate that this kind of workshop is held and organised by PTDF under the auspices of the Ministry of Petroleum Resources.
How often do we hope to see this kind of data-related training?
We organise various types of workshop and training regularly. Like I said, our major responsibility is capacity building in the oil and gas industry, and more events will be coming.
Over the years the PTDF has trained thousands of Nigerians in oil and gas related fields both home and abroad, but most of them hardly find jobs after the training. Is PTDF not worried about this?
Basically, the responsibility of PTDF is capacity building; human resource development training is our responsibility. In as much as we know this responsibility, we have sister agencies like the NNPC, DPR and NCDMB; those are agencies that supervise and have relationship with activities that have to do with projects in the oil and gas industry that generate employment. So, we always collaborate with those agencies to ensure that the products of trainings from the PTDF are mostly employed.
Internationally if you are brilliant, you are brilliant, therefore, most of them get international employment immediately after their training.
The National Assembly has passed the Petroleum Industry Governance (PIGB) which when assented to by the president could see the merger of some agencies in the industry. What is the future of the PTDF post PIGB?
The future of PTDF is very bright under the PIGB because we have a peculiar responsibility in the oil and gas industry. That responsibility is capacity building, and it involves human resource development, technology development, research and development. Any industry that doesn’t have research and development cannot grow.
The PIGB will even enhance our position more than the way it was before.
There are plans to compel indigenous and foreign oil companies to set aside certain percentage of their training budgets to fund PTDF training. What is the state of the proposal now?
Our fundamental source of funding is advance payment from acreage and all the rest because commercialisation is not happening regularly. What we are saying is that since we are a central training agency in the entire oil industry, there is no need for Shell, Chevron and Mobil to establish an independent training institute; we can bring all these effort and resources together under the auspices of the PTDF. It becomes a pool of fund to train Nigerians in different parts of the world in specialist areas that are beneficial to the oil and gas industry.
What has been the response from the IOCs and other oil companies?
So far, they are responding, that is why you see various activities happening around the PTDF and the present minister of state is giving us a lot of encouragement to reach out to the industry.