Mkpoikana Udoma
Port Harcourt — The policies of the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board, NCDMB has checkmated the total dominance of the country’s oil and gas sector by expatriates and foreign companies, an indigenous oil services firm, Kenyon International West Africa Ltd, has said.
This is as the oil well control specialist firm applauded NCDMB for creating jobs for Nigerian companies in the oil and gas sector, as well as growing the technical capacity of indigenous companies in the sector.
Speaking, a field engineer with Kenyon International West Africa Ltd, Mr. Paul Ubong, said indigenous companies have grown in leaps and bounds under the regulatory guides of NCDMB, which according to him has drastically reduced the influx of expatriates in the oil and gas industry.
Ubong spoke at the sidelines of the 4th Nigerian Oil and Gas Opportunities Fair, NOGOF2023 organized by the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board, in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State
He recalled that Kenyon was the company who stopped the well blowout of Aiteo’s OML29 in 2021, when a foreign company engaged by the operator could not deploy personnel to site.
According to him, NCDMB’s policy guidelines to oil multinationals to utilise services by local firms have set a benchmark for other sector of Nigeria’s economy to learn from, hence the NOGICD Act has helped grew the technical capacity of indigenous companies in the oil and gas business and raised the Nigerian Content level from less than five percent to current level of 54 percent today.
“All the jobs that the indigenous people can handle since the NOGICD Act 2010 have been given to Nigerians, we now have indigenous companies doing the jobs that were given to foreigners with associated capital flight.
“More trainings, more hands-on experience on the job, you can see now that Nigeria has competence hands, but what we needed is just development.
“That is just the gap that the Local Content Board has come to bridge, to create more Opportunity more development,” Keyon said.
The oil well control expert also announced that Kenyon has developed a homegrown solution to oil theft and vandalism awaiting widespread deployment across oilfields in the country.
On the massive divestment of IOCs from onshore assets, he said that Nigeria has the manpower and human resources to run the facilities.
“We have people that have been trained in that area by international companies. We have a lot of good hands, many of our guys have even gone outside the country to work in search of greener pastures.”
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