By Mohammed Ibrahim
if you want to achieve excellence, you must refuse to let anything stand in the way of your potential,” so says the Indian writer, Sai Pradeep. And for Vince Lombardi, “The pursuit of perfection may be impossible, but if we chase perfection, we just might catch excellence.”
These words aptly describe Sarki Auwalu, a chemical engineer who was recently appointed Director, Department of Petroleum Resources.
Auwalu’s announcement as substantive director of that crucial government agency has cleared the fog of uncertainty that had pervaded the organisation since the exit of the former substantive director, Mordecai Ladan, who had earlier bowed out at the expiration of his four-year- tenure.
His successor, Ahmad Shakur was appointed in an acting capacity, fuelling uncertainty within the organisation.
Stakeholders and other players in the sector have applauded Auwalu’s appointment, describing him as a round peg in a round hole.
Not a few people have expressed confidence that he possesses the expertise and courage needed to reposition the DPR and set it on the path of exponential growth, in line with the Buhari administration’s Next Level agenda.
In his Independence Day speech on October 1, President Muhammadu Buhari had subtly chided some revenue-generating agencies for their inability to meet agreed targets.
Said the president: “Our revenue-generating and reporting agencies will come under much greater scrutiny, going forward, as the new performance management framework will reward exceptional revenue performance, while severe consequences will attend failures to achieve
agreed revenue targets.”
Since that announcement, leadership changes have been announced in some of such agencies. Some have even volunteered that Auwalu’s choice as director might have been part of efforts by the Buhari administration to raise the capacity of the DPR to perform its duty as well as achieve and even exceed its revenue targets.
As of now, there is a groundswell of positive expressions suggesting that with his education, and 21-year experience within the organisation, Auwalu is imbued with the capacity and strength to reposition the DPR for optimal performance. The League of Senior Major Marketers, North East Zone was emphatic that Auwalu’s appointment would bring a huge measure of stability to the agency. Abubakar Waziri, the group’s spokesman stated that before Auwalu’s appointment, the absence of a substantive head at the DPR in the past months had, to some extent, stalled productivity within the agency, as a result of infighting over who among the deputy directors would occupy the top office.
Shortly after his appointment, at a workshop in Lagos, the DPR boss unveiled a document containing a set of new guidelines of operations for the upstream sector of the Nigerian oil and gas industry. The document is part of efforts geared towards limiting the cost of oil production in the country by five per cent to make companies focus more on exploration.
Among the new guidelines are Work Programme and Budget Automation, Rig and Vessel Work Automation, Drilling/Completion/Re-entry Work Process Automation and the Nigerian Oil and Gas Contract Advertising Portal (NOGCAP).
Said Auwalu: “The new document would improve efficiency in the industry, increase transparency, and bring in new initiatives that would change the dynamics of the industry in terms of automation and digitalisation.”
Auwalu told stakeholders that his organisation is determined to achieve government target of three million barrels per day (mbpd) of oil production and crude condense classification.
While noting that the country still produces 2.2 million barrels per day, Auwalu assured that the DPR, under his watch, would do everything to battle the encumbrances responsible for the shortfall.
These he said include certain technical issues, vandalism, process offset and crude theft.
Read Also: “We seal petrol stations to enforce policies”, says DPR
He has also announced plans to reduce the high cost of production incurred by operators in the industry by five per cent from 2020, noting that the department and other regulatory bodies had been mandated by the federal government to bring the cost down without delay.
He assured that he and his team would work with stakeholders to achieve the present administration’s mandate to grow production of crude oil from its current 2.2Auwalu and the challenges facing DPR
million barrels per day (mbpd) to three million barrels per day in 2020. He has told stakeholders that the DPR would work with them to improve exploration activities in the country.
“We will be having constant engagements with stakeholders to key into government’s initiatives. We still have exploration activities going on, but it might not be at a level we expect,” Auwalu explained.
Going forward, he said that the DPR would do more than it had done in the past in the area of engaging in initiatives that would increase the level of efficiency and transparency to change the dynamics of the industry in terms of processing, automation, and digitisation.
“The DPR as a regulatory body of the oil and gas industry can account for every molecule that is produced in this country, both at the wellhead, the filling stations and at the terminals,” he said.
The new DPR helmsman also disclosed that in the first quarter of next year, a production accounting workshop would be organised for stakeholders in the industry.
The workshop, he said, would show how proper records on activities of the DPR are kept. He also said the recent guidelines launched by the DPR would guide stakeholders in the industry, bring in more efficiency and transparency and reduce turnaround time of processes and operations in the sector.
Players in the industry are waiting to see positive changes within the DPR under Auwalu’s leadership.
- Ibrahim, a public relations consultant, wrote in from Abuja.
Leave a Reply