• Vows to ensure viability of new projects
Mkpoikana Udoma 12 February 2016, Sweetcrude, Port Harcourt – The Nigeria Content Development and Monitoring Board, NCDMB, has fixed the year 2020 as the deadline of achieving its specific target in terms of compliance to the local content policy.
NCDMB’s Manager, Capacity Building, Engr. Frank Ibi, disclosed this in Port Harcourt, saying Nigeria had already achieved 70 percent compliance in the local content development policy as he called on all stakeholders to work hard to achieve the specific target.
He spoke during the commissioning of Mudiaine Ultra-modern laboratory and graduation ceremony of the international welding engineering students.
In a related development, Executive Secretary of the Board, Mr. Denzil Amagbe Kentebe, revealed that the agency was working to ensure the viability and profitability of new projects despite dwindling oil prices in the international market.
According to him, so long as the price of oil remains low, the Board’s challenge would be to device strategies that will accommodate local content, adding that his team was engaging the International Oil Companies, IOC’s, to partner with them on that.
“The Board will continue implementation of its Capacity Development Initiatives (CDIs), to create a robust local supply chain that will meet the human and material requirements of the industry within acceptable cost, schedule and without compromising safety, environment and quality.
“On manufacturing and infrastructure development, we are implementing several initiatives to domicile manufacturing activities, to achieve in-country value addition,” he said.
Kentebe maintained that the board will stimulate local pipemill manufacturing from 100,000Mt/ annum in 2010 to 270,000Mt/annum while also noting that effort to develop Polaku Pipemill and the efforts of 3rd party investors will be aggressively pursued in 2016, to achieve 600,000Mt/ annum local capacity by 2017 (compared to annual demand estimate of 800,000Mt/annum).
The NCDMB boss explained that the Board will work towards establishing oil and gas parks to support service providers interested in manufacturing activities, adding that the Board has acquired suitable land in three states – Imo, Bayelsa and Cross River states; and have commenced training of SMEs for the scheme.
According to him, when fully established, the oil and gas parks will serve as hubs for equipment manufacturing and services, community entrepreneurs will be engaged and fully integrated into the oil and gas supply chain while thousands of jobs will be created directly and indirectly.
He also hinted that the NCDMB had started to promote the local manufacture of LPG cylinders in response to the policy thrust of Government to encourage use of cooking gas just as it had also identified prospective investors.