What 1.5billion Africans may get from NCDMB divulging oil mining secrets it worked for
There are policy instruments from the NCDMB to help if any organisation of repute want to start and complete more offshore gas-based projects.
Sometimes there are few hurdles, but this week though, what is happening is the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB) getting on with what is generally its mandate before recent media distractions, which is simply to groom and harvest local capacities for the country’s crude oil industry, but this time while at it, it is picturing how relief will get to 1.5 billion Africans as the main focus.
The Executive Secretary of the Board, Engr. Felix Omatsola Ogbe was at the heart of it in Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory, this past Tuesday, 25 February.
In there at an Abuja Continental Hotel event hall presenting as a keynote speaker making a sound pitch he hopes would reverberate beyond the Nigerian International Energy Summit (NIES 2025) enclosure he was in, the NCDMB’s top exec told oil and gas industry stakeholders operating in Africa to institute a continent-wide local content framework that harmonises policies and fosters cross-border partnerships, although it wouldn’t be the first time Engr. Ogbe has called for this particular meaningful change.
According to the executive secretary mapping his address around a summit theme – Unlocking Africa’s Potential through Local Content: Policies, Partnerships, and Progress– there can be no better time to get the needed inter-government interaction sorted than right now as he made his speech.
How Engr. Ogbe’s mind so far connects oil industry capabilities is what he told the energy summit. They learned that local content is not just a policy – it is a strategy for sustainable economic growth.
Without this in place, there is no economic transformation and energy security across Africa, which is what the NCDMB agency he is leading feels it has the mandate to make happen.
Ultimately, it is to become a continent that relies on local ingenuity, be it in shipbuilding, which led to the manufacturing of a floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) commissioned by TotalEnergies.
The Egina FPSO launched in 2018 is one of TotalEnergies’ most ambitious ultra-deep offshore projects, five years since the contract initated by the French company was awarded to the South Korean shipbuilder based at the Tarkwa Bay beach in Lagos – that is, the Samsung Heavy Industries Nigeria (SHIN) which has experienced a boom of activities which made it need up to 1,000 locally-sourced workers.
A vital milestone that represents a tangible illustration of Total’s commitment to local content in Nigeria and also an ambition to reduce carbon emissions.
There are policy instruments from the NCDMB to help if any organisation of repute want to start and complete more offshore gas-based projects, for instance, should that be their interest.
Some of these ideas were highlighted at the conference. Like the Nigerian Content Equipment Certificate (NCEC) to motivate delivering in-country value.
The Marine Vessel Categorisation Implementation Strategy is yet another tool at the NCDMB’s disposal.
Due to this act of innovation, since 2010, stats around vessel ownership by indigenous companies in Africa’s most populous country has seen involvement grow from less than eight percent when matching up with the 60 percent increase that currently exists.
Then again, the executive secretary’s words about why the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) matters for what his team does alongside partners elsewhere. This probably backs a string of salient points he had been making.
A trade area presents an opportunity to position local content as a driver of continental industrialisation, says Engr. Felix Ogbe, while giving the keynote address three days ago.
Get to know the 2018 Egina FPSO
The project is notable for its use of a massive Floating Production, Storage, and Offloading (FPSO) unit, which is one of the largest ever built by TotalEnergies.
It also emphasises local content, with significant contributions from Nigerian contractors and workers. Additionally, Egina is recognised as the first oil project in Nigeria to achieve “zero routine flaring,” showcasing TotalEnergies’ commitment to reducing emissions, as earlier stated.
Setting up Egina ties to the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board has been vital because:
six of the eighteen modules on the FPSO were built and integrated locally,
over 48 million hours of work were carried out in Nigeria (77% of the total project workload), equivalent to an average workforce of 6,000 people over a five-year period, and;
more than 600,000 hours of training were provided locally on the different oil and gas activities during the project’s development.
Severing bottlenecks
Stiff bottlenecks used to hold everyone back, but not anymore with President Bola Tinubu’s list of executive orders that offered to shrink contracting cycles from 36 months to six.
This became the new order in March 2024 when the Presidential Directive on Local Content Compliance, Presidential Directive on Reduction of Petroleum Sector Contracting Cost and Timelines and Presidential Directive on Oil and Gas Companies (Tax Incentives, Exemption, Remission, etc) were announced.
If properly implemented, these offer incentives capable of driving quicker investments into the oil industry.
Marking the effect, the NCDMB’s executive secretary said that this directive sped up project approvals and removed bureaucratic delays that big firms with their money once didn’t think checked well with their taste buds, so at the moment is the entering of a new era.
It has also boosted investor confidence and accelerated project execution, says Engr. Ogbe, and that is the sort of milestones Africa as a whole ought to be setting, sitting on a $3trillion economy.
