It is the third day of the 13th Practical Nigerian Content (PNC) Conference and Exhibition today in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State and the gathering expected are high government representatives including cabinet members crafting out or tweaking policies at the presidency coming through for a focused hob-nobing with oil industry investors with whom they mostly share equal goals. With such a crowd under one umbrella, it presented the better-timed platform to highlight all the developmental milestones that the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB) has around its belt rounding up the very fast-paced year they all see.

On Tuesday 3 December 2024 at the co-hosted event where the NCDMB’s executive secretary Engr. Felix Omatsola Ogbe made it known, the Nigerian Content performance level in the oil and gas industry had grown to 56 percent in the current year. It is a salient point that conference delegates would want to ponder as they hear him speak considering the targets already set for the coming three years.

The Nigerian Content level stood at 54 percent as of December 2022 and 2023, with an exceptional outing in 2016, a year before a formal pathway aimed at growing home-grown capacity within the local oil and gas industry materialised—only then did output peak at 26 percent within a 12-month period.

By its expiry, the Nigerian Content 10-Year Strategic Roadmap (2017-2027) wants to have reached 70 percent performance, and Engr. Ogbe at the conference ending on Thursday has been showing government officials including the Deputy Governor of Bayelsa State, Senator Lawrence Ewhrudjakpo, Minister of State for Petroleum Resources (Oil), Senator Heineken Lokpobiri and the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources (Gas), Rt. Hon. Ekperikpe Ekpo how that journey is looking as Christmas approaches.

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Others who also got to see the view alongside these Executive officers were the Chairperson, Senate Committee on Local Content, Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan, the Chairperson of the House of Representatives Committee on Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring, Hon. Boma Goodhead, the Secretary General of the African Petroleum Producers Organisation (APPO), Dr. Umar Farouk Ibrahim and the C-suites of international and indigenous oil and gas companies working locally or plan to.

This setup felt completed with the presence of the operating and regulatory agencies applying the rules that guide everyone in the petroleum sector.

To calculate the Nigerian Content performance level, one looks to NCDMB’s Monitoring and Evaluation Directorate of the NCDMB which anchors its measurement based on the ongoing projects in the upstream, midstream and downstream segments of the oil and gas industry.

All these data are sieved through a summation of the entire amounts expended on projects and the Nigerian Content component in a year. They come through the statutory reports generated and then submitted by companies.

Such documents show the picture having been verified for integrity during several Nigerian Content performance reviews and workshops that would have been held. At one of these, the attendees must be able to see that the reports gathered sync with the Nigerian Content Compliance Certificates (NCCC) on projects that had been approved by the Board – that is how they get the figures.  

So far, marking further milestones, according to Engr. Ogbe yesterday, 312 Nigerian Content Plans have been commissioned by the Board, while 402 Nigerian Content Compliance Certificates (NCCCs) have been issued to organisations circling the oil and gas orbit for the opportunity to contribute.

There are the new Project Certification and Authorisation Directorate (PCAD) guidelines which have reduced the Board’s touchpoints from nine to five, and also the contracting cycle being cut down to six months.

Within two days of the PNC conference starting, Engr. Ogbe together with a Bank of Industry (BoI) representative signed a pact headlining as the Revised Nigerian Content Community Contractors Financing Scheme. It is a fund set to address a critical challenge faced by local contractors in accessing much-needed funds for contracts awarded by oil and gas companies.

A seed of ₦15billion has already entered it. The single obligor limit has been increased from N20 million to N100 million, the executive secretary possibly hinted.

One other driving factor of the Board’s success this year is the Nigerian Content Academy recently established to train and prepare Nigerians to take up roles in the oil and gas industry – be it upstream exploration and back to downstream processing – Engr Ogbe said new career paths and economic opportunities are being opened for local communities. Ministers attending the conference got the chance to unveil this Academy as part of activities marking the event.

The feeling wrapped around having a 10-year Strategic Roadmap in the first place ties with being intentional. Ensuring life functions better than pre-2010 when the NCDMB hadn’t emerged through the Nigerian Oil and Gas Industry Content Development Act (NOGICDA) has given new insight from the Executive Secretary about the Back-to-the-Creeks Initiative.

Here, the focus is on taking Nigerian Content benefits to local communities, especially developing basic educational facilities in communities and equipping youths in host communities with the skills needed to meet industry demands, thus directly supporting the local content drive.   

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But the 13th Practical Nigerian Content (PNC) Conference and Exhibition talking stage wasn’t meant for Engr. Ogbe alone – the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources (Gas), Rt. Hon. Ekperikpe Ekpo also got the chance to speak. The minister commended NCDMB for systematically aligning its local content policy initiatives with the Federal Government’s gas development agenda.

He was able to see the NCDMB’s support for compressed natural gas (CNG) projects, modular gas processing plants, manufacturing plants for liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) cylinders, LPG depots, LPG terminals, LPG storage and bottling plants, gas gathering facilities, smart gas and detector alarm services.

All these, according to the cabinet member, are the important areas where the Board’s strategic intervention has made huge gains for Nigeria.

In the last 12 months, two critical gas projects were completed, Mr Ekpo admits. The new installations are SEPLAT Assa North and Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) Ohaji South which has a combined capacity of 600 million standard cubic feet/day. After this is the 300 MMscfd Kwale Gas Gathering (KGG) Hub and Injection Facility, jointly executed by Xenergy Limited and the NCDMB, commissioned about the same time. 

If gas will be the mainstay of Nigeria’s energy shift, says the minister, more moves in this form would be needed. This is why the government he represents is giving local businesses a chance to engage in gas distribution, processing, and power generation.

“Defining the Next Frontier for Nigerian Content Implementation” was the theme that the Practical Nigerian Content Forum chose for the year and the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources (Gas) see this as a call to action and a reaffirmation of Nigeria’s commitment to leveraging our local capabilities to drive energy security, economic growth, and environment sustainability.

It is for this reason that the conference, organised by the NCDMB in partnership with DMG Events Limited ought to be sustained. It is a spur for practical ideas that move our country closer to a promising and sustainable energy future.

Also speaking at the event, Minister of State for Petroleum Resources (Oil), Senator Heineken Lokpobiri, commended the NCDMB for organising the Forum and for significant milestones recorded thus far since its establishment in 2010. He revealed that wherever he has been across Africa for oil and gas-related events, other countries want to come to Nigeria to learn from its local content success story.

More of Mr Lokpobiri’s dealings are with oil industry multinationals and there has been a trail of announcements in the past two years over their divestment plans but he said to the conference delegates that no one should be particularly bothered because the companies are only focusing on new interests within the Nigerian sphere. Like moving from onshore operations to deep offshore.   

According to this minister, quality, standards and [the] capacity developed have to be sustained for higher efficiency.

The next speaker observed at the conference was the Secretary General of the African Petroleum Producers Organisation (APPO), Dr. Umar Farouk Ibrahim who was speaking to decline in funding for oil and gas projects. He is looking forward to the Africa Energy Bank (AEB) taking off in the second quarter of 2025, after the signing and ratification of the Establishment Agreement by the required number of countries. Abuja in the Federal Capital Territory will be its headquarters.

Getting up to December had been a long road of innovation and future thinking as seen with the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) Train 7 Project. Bayelsa, where the PNC exhibition event is still holding, provides up to 60 percent of NLNG’s feedstock until Train 7 is completed, says the Deputy Governor of the state Senator Lawrence Ewhrudjakpo. It is why he has clamoured for one to be built in his domain, the way neighbouring Rivers State is enjoying patronage.

Having heard the organiser’s welcome address offered by the Country Director (Nigeria) and Portfolio Director (Africa), DMG Nigeria Limited, Mrs Wemimo Oyelana, next for the conference is to dash down to the next day which means Wednesday 4 December 2024.

Delegates are expected at the 17-storey high Nigerian Content Tower, located at 10 Oxbow Lake Road, Swali, Yenagoa, Bayelsa State. What they will get is already waiting.

Meiza Nigeria