Illegal Refiners, Others for Training, Integration

• Illegal Refiners, Others for Training, Integration

The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, has directed some institutions to develop training plans that will give requisite skills to illegal refiners, pipeline vandals and others to make them productive.

The institutions are the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB), the Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF) and the Petroleum Training Institute (PTI).

He gave the directive at the just-concluded Nigerian Content Workshop, organised by New Planets Projects with the Senate Committee on Petroleum Resources Upstream, in Owerri, Imo State.

Kachikwu said NCDMB, PTDF and PTI should develop a plan for training youths, that are involved in pipeline vandalism, illegal refining and other illicit activities in the oil and gas industry.

The training will focus on improving their skillsets and getting them to embrace productive activities to further boost oil and gas industry’s capacity building initiatives.

He said: “We need to find a middle-level specialised system of training people in the oil industry, a system that is not necessarily tied to degrees. We need to capture a lot of those in the hinterlands who have finished WAEC or their first diploma and don’t know where to go to, but have some unique skillsets. We need to bring them to finishing schools.”

Kachikwu also directed the institutions to use existing facilities in Port Harcourt and Kaduna to carry out the planned training and other capacity building programmes for industry stakeholders.

“We have to provide local competency trainings, relying on support from oil companies in terms of investment and overseas faculty.”

The Minister also directed the NCDMB to ensure that the oil and gas industry is able to produce its needs by year 2027. He said the Federal Government expected that over the next 10 years, the oil and gas industry, in collaboration with foreign investors, would have developed in-country capacities and capabilities to produce all its offshore platforms locally.

“I would like to see the Japanese coming; I would like to see the Koreans come here; I would like to see collaborative efforts that will make our oil industry produce everything that we need,” he said.

Kachikwu acknowledged the strides made by the Board in seven years, commending the excellent achievements of the Executive Secretary, Simbi Wabote, whom he credited for working with energy and passion and meeting several targets set for the Board in the past one year.

Kachikwu noted that Nigerian Content achievement in engineering services had hit 80 per cent, but said performance in offshore aspects of the industry was still substantially low, and charged international and local oil companies to collaborate with the NCDMB to achieve the new target.

“It doesn’t matter how much money we make, how much gas we produce or alternative fossils we produce; if we do not ensure that a lot of that is captured locally in terms of benefits, we have no stake,” the minister added.