Digitalise Oil Sector, Senate Tells Buhari

• Digitalise Oil Sector, Senate Tells Buhari

President Muhammadu Buhari has been urged to embrace technology if leakages in the oil sector must come to an end.

The Senate on Thursday said by computerising the nation’s oil sector, the challenges associated with the sector’s production, logistics and sales will drop.

Senator George Sekibo, who sponsored the motion on the ‘Need to install computerised oil facilities management gadgets for Nigerian crude oil businesses,’ said: “We still use human beings (four persons) to monitor a kilometre of pipeline, giving undue opportunities to oil thieves, giving rise to unnecessary pipeline explosion, causing deaths and unquantifiable loss of products and other human valuables,” he said.

The Senate has instructed the joint panel to develop an international standard method of computerising the oil and gas business processes, including pipeline protection and quantity and quality control.

Sekibo also said while other nations in the oil business have gone digital in the last five decades, Nigeria was stuck in analogue technology.

He said over 61 years of doing oil business, the nation can not precisely account for the total amount of products produced, wasted, sold and lost via pipeline vandalism.

He explained that it made a practical analysis of the sector almost impossible as there were several accounts from each administration. Sekibo said digitalising the sector would help the government manage oil business better, monitor every facet and incorporate transparency.