For over 60 years, Nigeria has not taken advantage of its abundance of hydrocarbons
Experts deliberate on how to maximise Nigeria’s exploitation of Hydrocarbons through policy and improved technical methods.
The fifth session of the event commenced virtually and attendances where distinguished individual and thought leaders including George Etomi , Chairman,lawyers in Oil and Gas Network as Moderator; Lai Fatona, Chairman, Petroleum Club, Soji Awogbade, Founding Partner, AELEX, Oneal Lajuwomi, founder & CEO at Wavelength IPS, Waziri O. Adio, Executive Secretary Nigeria Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative, Dieter Bassi, Director, Technical NEITI, Oluwatoyin Akinlade, Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Mines and Steel Development as panellists.
The session began with Oneal giving an opening presentation. He presented that what Nigeria needed regarding the hydrocarbon issue, is to expand the midstream capacity through policies and market-based incentives, to position itself as a refinery in the sub-sahara African region to cater for the countries growing energy needs, expand the petrochemical sector through market enablers and incentives for the inflow of private capital and provide legislative backing to the recent downstream deregulation to spur more investments and plug the traditional downstream sector challenges such as product quality. He concluded by calling for support of a local content policy to promote production within the country as opposed to outsourcing and to improve domestic technical capacity.
Lai Fatona began by passionately expressing his disheartenment at Nigeria’s failure to maximise the hydrocarbon value chain.hewentontosay“sincethe commencementoffirstdiscovery of hydrocarbons in Nigeria way backinthe50”sourstoryhasbeen a one-way story of not taking full advantage of the value chain of hydrocarbons and that is seen in the current chain; from the wellhead, into the pipeline and into the export terminal. That’s it”
Soji Awogbade, the founding partner of Aelex, analysed the issue of what the law could do to stimulate the industry. He stated that. “The truth is if you do not erect the building blocks to train the skill sets that the industry needs the industry will not buy it.” The industry will not hire criminal law specialist to draft upstream contracts or downstream they will need people who have taken an interest in and have mastered the subject to draft the contract. The local content board needs to think of ways to assist these players to play in this field.
Waziri, in his presentation, stated that the age of oil is going. Hewentontosaythatinthepast20 years more African countries than not now have oil; concurrently the oil demand has gone down due to renewableenergyandtheinterplay of supply and demand did not bode well for Nigeria.
Dieter spoke on Nigeria’s solid minerals and how they could be exploited. He provided a comprehensive outline of the current solid mineral deposits and how Nigeria has historically failed to take advantage of these natural resources. He stated that solid minerals have the potential to revitalise the economy. Akinlade reiterated this averment, saying that the mining sector provides the most veritable platform for the revival of the economy.