Local content inches to 56% amid over $7b divestment

• NASS, ministers advocate capacity development
• Experts raise concern over stranded oil, gas reserves

As Nigeria’s oil and gas industry faces significant transitions, local participation has moved to 56 per cent, a sharp leap from 26 per cent in 2016, but a dismal two per cent increase from 54 per cent last year.

This comes as the two chambers of the National Assembly and ministers of oil and gas called for drastic development in manufacturing locally most of the oil and gas materials being imported.

Also, over $7 billion worth of assets were divested to indigenous oil companies in the last eight years as the share of Nigeria’s oil production by local companies moved from three per cent to 30 per cent.

With energy transition feared to make oil and gas reserves stranded in Africa, stakeholders at the Practical Nigerian Content Forum in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, noted that Nigeria needed to develop its energy technology and assist other Africans, otherwise the continent might face an energy crisis.

While the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB), at the event, disclosed a revised community contractors finance scheme with N15 billion funding and moved the single obligor limit from N20 million to N100 million, the Senate asked oil companies to reinvest the nation’s oil money in the education of young Nigerians.

The stakeholders, including Minister of State for Petroleum Resources (Gas), Ekperikpe Ekpo; Executive Secretary of NCDMB, Felix Ogbe; Minister of State for Petroleum Resources (Oil), Heineken Lokpobiri; Acting Governor of Bayelsa State, Lawrence Ewhrudjakpo and Sen Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan, were worried over energy transition, divestment and how to use local technology beyond mere human capacity development.

Ekpo highlighted key government policies designed to deepen domestic participation, including critical infrastructure such as the OB3 and Ajaokuta-Kaduna-Kano (AKK) gas pipelines.

According to him, the projects aim to boost gas production by nearly four billion cubic feet per day by 2030.

He insisted that Nigeria must begin to fabricate the various equipment needed to deliver gas expansion in the country before the second quarter of 2025, including kits for the Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) initiative.