NCDMB working to steer FDIs coming in down to the creeks of the Niger Delta
FDIs, says NCDMB’s executive secretary would catalyse new projects in the Nigerian oil and gas industry, possibly indicating that three Presidential Directives rolled out in March 2024 by President Bola Tinubu, are actually working.
It was the 42nd Annual International Conference and Exhibition of the Nigerian Association of Petroleum Explorationists (NAPE) in Lagos on Monday, 11 November 2024. Expectedly, the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB) made a presence to galvanise every stakeholder it could to help implement a local content-driven pursuit that wants to see better times in Nigeria’s energy sector, starting right now.
How will that work? The Board’s Executive Secretary, Engr. Felix Omatsola Ogbe, presented this, although he wasn’t physically present at the event to read a paper on “Resolving the Nigerian Energy Trilemma: Energy Security, Sustained Growth, and Affordability.”
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Through his submissions made via General Manager, Corporate Communications and Zonal Coordination of the NCDMB, Mr. Esueme Dan Kikile, Esq., he was able to spot the alarming scale of pipeline vandalism and theft of crude oil as the biggest threats to Nigeria’s energy security. Still, the Board won’t just leave things lying idly.
All year long, Engr. Ogbe has been attending one energy-related conference or the other. They have been held in his country or outside and so he has much insight. This time with the NAPE circle in Lagos, it is pretty more of the same pushing for investments in the oil and gas sector where his portfolio lies. He says more major oil and gas projects are required as well as a robust security strategy based on mutually beneficial collaboration with host communities.
The organisations that put in their money in Nigeria’s energy sector are mostly multinationals and other times, they are expats staging a consortium with local businesses to get their investment plans moving. Over the past few years, as the lamentations over climate change being an existential threat grow louder, investments in the country have noticeably dwindled through recent exits.
Getting in new funds despite all these challenges is strictly why the NCDMB that Engr. Ogbe leads has decided to work with energy industry stakeholders so that they can all have a week in a year that will be dedicated to signing new Final Investment Decisions (FIDs) as projects keep churning out.
Having such a deal-sealing festival of some sort to look forward to will mostly attract prospective investors, the way the executive secretary said at the conference.
These investors, it is anticipated would be encouraged to complete their tasks in a very quick fashion when trying to meet the deadlines attached to a project they are working on. This effect is supposed to trickle down into the dealings of regulators too, as it is being envisaged.
FDIs, says NCDMB’s executive secretary would catalyse new projects in the Nigerian oil and gas industry, possibly indicating that three Presidential Directives rolled out in March 2024 by President Bola Tinubu, are actually working. One of the directives wants to fast-track the contracting cycle and incentivise investments in our sector.
One initiative of the Board that is quite similar to this proposed week for signing investment contracts is the biennial Nigerian Oil and Gas Opportunity Fair (NOGOF), which all the international and indigenous operating companies with sights in the energy sector haven’t failed to attend. It offers the organiser a chance to share awareness of opportunities and projects that will need competent hands.
When there is room, Engr. Felix Ogbe does not miss taking up the stage to notify everyone about the “Back to the Creeks Initiative” his team has hatched, but at the moment, information about how it will run is not readily available.
For now, the initiative can only be perceived through words as the Board’s strategy to create a safe and secure operating environment for oil and gas companies. One that helps cut down the huge costs associated with vandalism and attacks on personnel and installations. This is how the Executive Secretary described the policy when his representative introduced it to a different conference crowd.
We are convinced at the Board that the incessant tampering with crude oil pipelines and hostilities in oil-producing communities have a huge impact on energy security, Engr. Ogbe said. The Back to the Creeks Initiative will probably stop this.
It is another investment drive taking corporates back to the villages and riverine settlements from where they have been mining crude oil and launching new installations. All these bring along environmental costs or losses that are usually not factored in.
Now the locals, according to the NCDMB leadership, will get corporate social responsibility projects around them. There would be the provision of affordable finance to local contractors, an upgrade of basic educational facilities in their location, as well as the teachers getting improved.
