Yemisi Izuora
The Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board, NCDMB, has called for renewed investments in the country’s oil and gas industry to help spur production to meet Governments revenue target and energy needs that will drive economic development.
The Executive Secretary, ES, of the Board, Simbi Wabote, who made the call at the Breakfast Meeting with the Guild of Corporate Online Publishers (GOCOP), in Abuja on Tuesday, said that contrary to the popular view, the unfortunate stealing of crude oil by vandals is not the only reason for Nigeria’s low production numbers and the decrease in foreign exchange earnings.
According to Wabote, the nation’s production deficit is partly caused by the lack of major investments in the past decade, declining oil production from aging oil fields, and the clamor for energy transition which caused international oil companies to cut back on new projects.
The theme of the engagement is “Sustaining Nigerian Content Amidst Divestments to Indigenous Oil Companies: The Role Of The Media.”
The ES, also identified the emergence of attractive oil-producing nations in Africa and across the globe, as leading to intense competition for investment capital.
He noted that unfortunately, “These challenges were exacerbated by our inexplicable delay in the enactment of the Petroleum Industry Act and of course the long contracting cycle time.”
Wabote, stated that in attempt to address that aspect of challenge, the Board, successfully initiated the Service Level Agreement (SLA) with key entities in the Nigerian oil and gas industry.
“We initiated this concept in 2017 to shorten the contracting cycle in the Nigerian oil and gas industry from an uncertain 2 to 3-year period to 6 months.
“Our goal was to spur the speedy development of new oil and gas projects, ensure compliance with the provisions of the Nigerian Content Act, and guarantee timely approvals of Nigerian Content documents.
“Our objectives were also to facilitate ease of doing business, set new standards of quality service delivery in the public and private sectors and provide evidence that the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB) is not a mere regulator, but essentially a Business Enabler.” explained Wabote.
These aspirations, he said are even more urgent today to arrest the monumental decline in the nation’s oil production numbers and to support President Bola Tinubu in every possible way to achieve the economic policies in his Renewed Hope Agenda.
He continued, “At the NCDMB, we took bold steps to use the SLA to cut down time in all our touchpoints during pre-qualification, bidding, and award stages of the oil and gas tenders, starting with Nigeria LNG Ltd in June 2017.
“That SLA with the Nigeria LNG was the first of its kind between a regulator and another entity in the Nigerian oil and gas industry.
The implementation ensured that we broke a record for the shortest contract approval period.”
He said that before the institution of the SLA, the Board had already introduced the 15-DAY Rule to the industry in 2017, where it promised to respond within 15 working days to any formal request for approvals that relate to oil industry projects execution. The 15-Day Rule also permitted operators to go ahead with their projects if we fail to respond to their request after 15 days.
“As further proof of our commitment to a short contracting cycle, we achieved a 14-month contract approval record on the Zabazaba and Etan deepwater project which was promoted by the Nigerian Agip Exploration, in partnership with SNEPCo. We had accomplished this record before the project was suspended due to non-technical reasons.
“We are extremely delighted that our SLA template has been adopted across the entire oil and gas industry through the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) and Service Level Agreement (SLA) we signed last week with the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Ltd (NNPC Ltd) and five international oil-producing companies.
“Other participating companies in the SLA included Shell Petroleum Development Company, ExxonMobil, Chevron Nigeria, Nigerian Agip Exploration and Total Exploration and Production Nigeria.” Wabote added.
He further said that the Board equally has a separate SLA with the Indigenous Petroleum Producer Group (IPPG), which was signed in October 2018.
The ES, however, stated that last week’s SLA signing is the climax of the adoption of the initiative and we commend the Management of the NNPC Ltd for their participation, stating that, “With the position of the NNPCL as the senior partner in the joint ventures (JV) and concessionaire of the production sharing contracts (PSC) arrangements, the chances of achieving the 6-month target period and other aspirations of the SLA look very bright.”