Category: Energy

Energy transition is an enabler of sustainable development and climate resilience. Stakeholders in the sector are convinced that forward-looking actions in this direction would create new jobs, stimulate growth and harvest social and health benefits. But how this is achieved is dependent on transparency and accountability  by the government and stakeholders. AMBROSE NNAJI writes.

Energy transition involves shifting from a system based on fossil fuels (oil, gas and coal) to one dominated by clean, renewable electricity. Its aim is to reduce energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to help meet global climate targets.

This is why experts and other stakeholders at the recently-concluded Strategic International Conference, organised by the Association of Energy Correspondents of Nigeria (NAEC), in Lagos, advocated that the country must be ready to mainstream transparency and accountability mechanisms into her energy transition plan to avoid the pitfalls of her energy circumstances.

The conference had as its theme: “Energy Transition, Shaping the Future of Nigeria’s Energy Industry: An Appraisal of the Petroleum Industry Act, Evolving Benefits and Challenges.”

Speaking on a sub-theme “Transparency and Accountability, Key to Sustainable Energy Sector: The Role of Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI),” the Executive Secretary, NEITI, Orji Ogbonnaya Orji, noted that as the world moves from fossil fuel to cleaner and sustainable energy, transparency and accountability would be central to efforts towards supporting the transition process. This, he said, would include the reporting of emissions, the disclosure of climate risks and the governance of the future energy industry.

Agreeing that NEITI has a major role to play in a sustainable energy sector for the country, he said the agency was working with its partners to help stakeholders gain full insights and deepen public knowledge on the risks and opportunities associated with the transition within the country’s national context through timely disclosures and dissemination of extractive industries’ data and information.

The agency, he further said, considering the multi-sectoral nature of the energy transition, is galvanising the needed inter-agency cooperation and national consensus for a sustainable energy sector.

Represented by the Assistant Director, Communications & Advocacy, NEITI, Mrs. Obiageli Onuorah, Orji said NEITI through the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) had engaged a consultant to advise it on energy transition.

“With the Natural Resources Governance Institute, our global affiliate -the EITI and BudgIt, we are planning a National Dialogue on Energy Transition in October,” he said.

He added that the dialogue would bring together experts to brainstorm on Nigeria’s contextual reality as it concerns its transition to a low carbon, cleaner and renewable energy future.

“The belief is that unimpeded access to timely information and data about the country’s oil, gas and mining sectors by the citizens, media and other accountability actors will promote public debate on the management of the sector, foster civic actions, accountability and ultimately sustainability in the sector,” Orji noted.

He said the agency was also supporting the government’s drive to increase revenues through reconciliations of operators’ data in the extractive sector, push for renewal of obsolete memorandum of understanding (MoUs) and fiscal regime of the sector and other policy advisory roles to the government.

Yet, the Chairman/Managing Director, Chevron Nigeria Limited, Mr. Rick Kennedy, agreed that a good regulatory framework was key to expanding the fortunes of the oil and gas industry while enabling the transition to energy solutions of the future.

Kennedy, who was represented by the Manager, Communications, Victor Anyaegbudike, said for Nigeria to sustain growth which had raised the quality of life for millions of people around the world, a competitive environment to produce affordable, reliable and cleaner energy to enable human progress was needed.

He noted that the global energy landscape had experienced substantial changes over the years, with expectations of more changes in the future.

But, nonetheless, Nigeria is endowed with the requirements for a growing and sustainable energy industry, which includes large hydrocarbon reserves (including abundant gas resources), a growing demand for energy, and a large population of young, talented human resources.

He said: ‘’The passage and signing into law of the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) is a major milestone in the reform of Nigeria’s oil and gas industry geared towards attracting investment and growth.

“Chevron recognises the opportunity which the PIA represents and we fully support the necessary collaboration between the regulators, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited and stakeholders in the industry that will enable the success of the Nigerian oil and gas industry. As we advance in the PIA implementation, we believe that natural gas is an important fuel, which will play a critical role as the world seeks to lower its overall carbon footprint. Recently, Nigeria launched its ‘Decade of Gas’ initiative, under the theme ‘Towards a gas-powered economy by 2030,’ that will work with the National Gas Expansion Programme in increasing gas production.

He said CNL supports this key step towards helping to utilise the country’s vast natural gas resources for the benefit of the nation.

For instance, the firm in aligning with the new global energy direction, has been able to reduce routine gas flaring by 95 per cent in the past 10 years. He assured that CNL will continue to enhance gas utilisation in Nigeria with focus on critical areas such as: Power generation to stimulate the growth of the manufacturing sector of the economy – signing of Gas Sale and Aggregation Agreements (GSAA) with Egbin Power Plc and Olorunsogo Generation Company Limited, Fertilisers for local consumption to support large scale agriculture for export and local consumption – signing of a GSAA with Dangote Fertiliser Limited. The Chief Executive Officer, Heritage Energy Operational Services Limited (HEOSL), Ado Oseragbaje, called on stakeholders to rise to the challenges of multiple transitions in the domestic industry.

He reiterated that as the world seeks to transition to net zero emission in 2050, the energy industry should continue to engage to identify its place in the global scheme of things because the conversation of energy transition has many faces. “Transitioning from one form of energy to a cleaner form, transition from one form of industry governance to another, transitioning from one fiscal regime to another as well as the key issue of transitioning from one form of stakeholder engagement paradigm to another as represented by the statutory provisions of the Petroleum Industry Act of 2021” require concerted response from stakeholders,” he added.

The National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA) has said that a total of 1,086 oil spills were recorded in Bayelsa State from 2015 to February 2022.

The Director-General, NOSDRA, Mr Idris Musa, made this known when delegations from Connected Development (CODE) and OXFAM paid an advocacy visit to his office in Abuja. The visit was to discuss some challenges witnessed in oil-bearing communities.

Musa said that out of the 1, 086 oil spill incidents recorded in Bayelsa, 917 were as a result of sabotage in the form of third party breakage of pipelines with hacksaw or outright blowing up of the pipelines.

He said that communities in the area must protect oil installations and tackle such vandals, as their silence was causing harm to their environment.

“You see we cannot keep running away, I gave you the statistics now that we recorded 1, 086 oil spill in Bayelsa from 2015 to February 2022, that is 84.4 per cent; that means we need to do something .

“It is not about experts, if I came from a community for instance, and then an expert will come and aid me to break a pipeline in my community that will spill oil into my water, will I then drink it and do other domestic chores?

“We need to speak to these issues, we have done that consistently with evidence, what we call Disaster Risk Reduction programme for communities, telling them why they do not need to vandalise oil facilities.

“So CSOs also have to wake up and interface with these communities, let everybody check his own part and do the right thing, that is what I will advocate, the blame is not just on oil companies’’.

“If everybody in the statistics I gave, which is  84.4 per cent, stop that act, then we will have zero spill and our environment will be good,” the DG said.

Musa said that Nigeria loses billions of Naira due to the oil spillage experienced on a daily bases.

He added that NOSDRA has been advocating against it and working to put an end to the sabotage and destruction of oil facilities.

“This is because when this spill happens, three things happen. As a nation, we lose revenue, individuals lose livelihood because the oil will impact on areas where they either fish or farm and then it is also a loss to the  oil companies and the  environment,” he added.

Mr Hamzat Lawal, Chief Executive Officer CODE, said that the organisation through its Follow the Money initiative, track the utilisation of public funds to ensure its judicious utilisation in the interest of communities.

Lawal said that CODE in collaboration with Oxfam have been working in the Niger Delta region through its  Conflict and Fragility project. He added that they were working on a new project and sought for collaboration with NOSDRA.

Lawal said the CODE partnership with OXFAM and the advocacy visit to NOSDRA was also to domesticate the National Action Plan on Business and Human Rights in Nigeria at federal and state levels.

Mr Henry Ushie, Project Coordinator, Fiscal Accountability for Inequality Reduction, said that OXFAM Nigeria works to  reduce poverty, which was caused by inequality.

“It is not that there are no resources, but those resources do not go round, because a few people have hijacked most of the resources to themselves.

“So we try to reduce poverty by also ending inequality in all its forms, whether social, political or gender inequality, we just make effort to end those forms of inequalities

“Specifically in Nigeria, we work across three key areas –  gender justice, economic livelihoods and also on accountable governance.

“Within this sphere of work, is our work on just economy, where we look at those areas that have to do with revenue sharing.

“For example, issues around natural resources within the extractive industries and within that space, we work with stakeholders to look at those anomalies, the mismanagement that happen, particularly at community level.”

Ushie said that the advocacy visit was to engage with NOSDRA on how to tackle challenges in extractive communities and how the communities can benefit more from the resources.

He added that the advocacy was to also get update on how the agency leveraged on the United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP26, and its plan to participate and maximise the upcoming COP27 for the benefit of the nation.

Chevron Nigeria has recorded a 95 per cent success in gas flaring  reduction.

It said it was exploiting measures to ensure a 100 per cent feat.

Communications Manager, Chevron Nigeria Mid Africa, Mr. Victor Anyaegbudike, made this known during the Nigerian-American Chamber of Commerce (NACC) Breakfast Meeting in Lagos.

He said the company would ensure free gas flaring in the country, insisting that the company would do it.

He said the company had established the Escravos Gas-to-Liquid (EGTL) project that would pick gases and put them in liquid, adding that  soon the EGTL will be brought into Nigeria and the liquid will come to Nigeria as diesel.

“We had already seen where the world is going that we have to really stop the emission of gas, not only gas, methane is another terrible carbon that we need to bring down”, adding that no responsible company would want to flare its gas, because it is a commercial property for Nigeria.

Highlighting the importance of the commodity, Anyaegbudike said gas is the next fuel, hence, it is the destination the firm is headed in terms of carbon emission. He said Chevron had done a lot in terms of reducing gas flare, which according to him, is impacting the communities.

“You see as time goes on when there’s zero flare there wouldn’t be any health hazards again associated with such kind of gas flare, that’s what we are doing and that’s the big story that we have and that we have been doing over the years,” he expressed.

According to Anyaegbudike, Nigeria’s declaration of a decade of gas initiative means there is a need to explore how gas could be commercially viable and how gas could become the transition fuel of the next century.

He recalled that Chevron had started talking about decade of gas even before Nigeria, hence, its focus in that direction long before now.

Speaking on the theme: “Chevron’s Strategic Social Investments-Supporting Nigerian Institutions” he said the company has what it calls gas gathering and compression systems. “We try to gather the gas that we have everywhere, those gas that would have been flared, we have facility to gather them from wherever the gas are, we have pipelines that gather them,” he said.

According to him, Chevron was the first company that started the Escravo project. He explained that when all these gases were picked it goes to a gas project where they are purified. This, he noted, makes the firm the highest supplier of domestic gas among all the international oil companies (IOCs) from 2015 till now.

“Because we produce this gas what we do is that we gather them, we don’t flare them any more that’s why the 95 percent and we are going to 100 percent,” he insisted.

The Deputy National President, Nigerian-American Chamber of Commerce (NACC), Thomas Oshobu, said Chevron had been a strategic investor and player in the oil and gas sector for several decades. According to Oshodu, who is the Deputy National President, the Foundation for Partnership Initiatives in the Niger Delta (PIND), was also incorporated in the country to implement and support these programmes.  “You recall in 2014 Chevron committed an additional $40million in funding to the NDPI through 2019. Chevron has contributed significantly in the past as existing social investments efforts and focusing on one strategic objective and that’s achieving a peaceful enabling environment for equitable growth particularly in the Niger Delta as well as human capacity building initiative for Nigerians as a whole,” Oshobu stated.

He noted that the country was in dire economic stress at the moment and therefore all efforts to help rebuild this nation both on the macro and the micro space must be welcomed and appreciated.

A new dawn is now in place in the country’s oil and gas sector. This was the position of the Chief Executive, Nigeria Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC), Gbenga Komolafe, and the Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC), Mele Kyari, as both men declared in unison that the era of marginal fields and discretional oil blocks allocation are over in the country.

Speaking at the 2022 Strategic International Annual Conference organised by the National Association of Energy Correspondents (NAEC), in Lagos, yesterday, Komolafe, represented by Dr. Abel Nsa, the NUPRC boss declared; “no marginal fields shall be declared under this era because the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) provisions have foreclosed this as well as any discretionary allocation of oil blocks.”

According to him, 30 oil blocks have, so far, been awarded through the marginal oil fields programme. Of these were two blocks in 1999; 24 in 2004, two in 2010 and one before this year.“As at today, 17 of these oil blocks are currently producing while 13 are not. The PIA has adequately addressed this and Petroleum Protecting Licenses (PPLs) have been awarded to firms based in merit.”

He however regretted that notwithstanding all of these, oil theft in the country has remained, becoming one of the major issues the government and commission is addressing. “We are planning seven additional regulations in line with provisions in the PIA to guarantee return on every dollar invested in Nigeria over any other jurisdictions. Host community development Trust Fund has replaced Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) and GMoUs between oil companies and the host communities,” Komolafe explained.

He noted that the PIA also provided for incentives aimed at growing reserves towards realisation of 40 billion barrels reserves and provision for reward for production milestones as shown in the Sections 232 and 233 of the Act.

“There is a Road map for tackling the security challenges in the industry, we are collaborating with the security agencies, we are installing gadget for real time loss detection. All these are done according to the provisions of the PIA.

Kyari, while delivering the keynote address, appraised NNPC’s PSCs renewal deals with Shell, Chevron , ExxonMobil, noted that in the last three weeks, the NNPC has settled issues with its partners, insisting that the firm has met the terms and conditions in the PIA.

“Our production is very low mostly because of the security challenges in the Niger Delta, and we are working collaboratively with stakeholders in addressing this. If we resolve the security issues, we will get back to 2.1 million barrels per day,” he said.

Nigeria is unable to meet its Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) monthly oil production quota in over five years, no thanks to oil theft, which continues to thrive in the country. And with a daily loss to this nefarious act estimated at 400, 000 barrels, fears are rife that if left unchecked, Nigeria may sink further into revenue insolvency. MUYIWA LUCAS writes.

An August 7, MV HEROIC IDUN, a super tanker with International Maritime Organisation (IMO) number 9858058 and Maritime Mobile Service Identity (MMSI) number 538008422, with 26 crew members comprising 16 Indians, eight Srilankans, a Polish and one Filipino, was spotted around the AKPO Deep offshore oil field operated by a multinational oil firm, at midnight. The vessel has the capacity to lift about three million barrels of crude oil.

Akpo field is located in Block OML 130, 200 kilometres offshore Nigeria in 1400 metres water depth.

At plateau production, Akpo produces 175,000 barrels per day (bbls/d) of condensate and exports 320 million Standard Cubic Feet per Day (mmscfd) of gas to Bonny NLNG plant. Akpo reservoirs contain 620 million barrels recoverable reserves of a critical fluid made of very light oil up to 53° API and classified as condensate, with wellhead shut-in pressures up to 400 bars, wellhead temperatures up to 116 °C and very high Gas Liquid Ratio (GLR). AKPO is not only a giant condensate field, but also a gas field with one trillion cubic feet (Tcf) planned gas export.

Although it is not strange to find such tankers around offshore areas given the nature of the business around such facility, MV HEROIC IDUN’s mission on that fateful day was suspect. The vessel, built on July 1, 2020, was seen through the NN’s Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA) facility, prompting NNS GONGOLA to establish communication and interrogate the vessel.

The interrogation revealed that the vessel, alleged to have entered the Nigerian waters to load crude oil products, neither had the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited’s (NNPC) loading permit, nor valid documents to be in the country’s waters. Consequently, the vessel, registered under the flag of Marshall Island, was directed to proceed to Bonny Fairway in Rivers State for further interrogation and Vessel Boarding Search and Seizure (VBSS) by the Nigerian Navy.

Rather than comply, the vessel increased its speed and changed its direction facing Sao Tome and Principe to escape. However, five days later, the vessel and its crew met their waterloo in Equatorial Guinea, as they were arrested by the Equatorial Guinea’s Navy, following an intelligence report supplied to the country by the Nigerian Navy (NN).

For decades, oil theft has been a source of concern to many. Crude oil, the mainstay of the economy, accounting for over 90 per cent of her revenue earnings, has been under siege of saboteurs for decades.

The menace reached a crescendo last week following a disclosure that an estimated 400, 000 barrels of crude oil worth over $40 million is stolen daily. The continued theft of this product has left the country losing out from benefitting from the high global prices of oil, whose effect has led to fiscal pressure on the economy as a result of declining revenues and soaring public debt.

The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Timipre Sylva, described the development as a “national emergency,” adding that this has led to the nation falling short of OPEC daily quota of 1.8 million barrels to 1.4 million barrels.

He warned that such huge economic loss was capable of crippling the nation’s economy, if not given the seriousness it deserved, regretting that the situation has persisted despite the efforts by the Federal and state governments to arrest it.

So worrisome has the situation become that eggheads at the Nigeria Economic Summit Group (NESG) and stakeholders at the Annual General Meeting (AGM) of Oando Plc, urged the government and other stakeholders to take more decisive actions to tackle the problem of oil theft, even as they rued its negative impact on the country.

In similar vein, shareholders of Oando Plc at the end of the Annual General Meeting in Lagos urged the government and other stakeholders to take more decisive actions to tackle the problem of oil theft, bemoaning the negative impact of oil theft and insecurity and calling for cohesive actions to tackle the menace.

    

Falling production

The country’s oil production output has been on the decline dure to theft, shut-ins, among others. In its Commodity Markets Outlook report for March, this year, the World Bank said Nigeria has the largest shortfall among oil-producing countries during the first quarter, a development it attributed to sabotage within the oil production system and other factors. The global finance body put the shortfall then at 500,000 barrels per day, coming ahead of Angola and Russia both with a shortfall of 300,000 barrels per day.

Yet, reports by the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) show that the country lost about N1.22 trillion to crude oil deficit in the first quarter of the year. According to OPEC, the country lost about 22.658 million barrels of crude oil within between January and April. The reports released in the last four months showed that Nigeria did not meet its OPEC oil production quotas in January, February and March.

The reports indicated that OPEC approved 1.683 million barrels per day as the country’s crude oil production quota in January, while the organisation approved 1.701mb/d and 1.718mb/d for the country in February and March, this year.

In its April Monthly Oil Market Report, OPEC observed that Nigeria’s oil production from secondary sources in January was 1.413mb/d, which dropped to 1.378mb/d in February and declined further in March to 1.354mb/d.

Analysis of the figures showed that the country fell short of the OPEC approved quota in January by 270,000 barrels daily, indicating inability to produce 8.370 million barrels to meet its approved target for the month.

Similarly, in February, Nigeria’s daily crude oil production loss viz-a-viz OPEC approved quota was 323,000 barrels, which amounted to 9.044 million barrels for the month. Likewise in March, the daily oil production of Nigeria was 364,000 barrels below OPEC approved quota. This, therefore, means that Nigeria’s crude oil production in March was 11.284 million barrels lower than its expected production quantities. The implication of the deficit was that in the first quarter of the year under review, Nigeria failed to produce 28.658 million barrels of crude oil to meet its production quota as approved by OPEC.

Still, OPEC noted that the country’s crude oil production fell by 744,000 barrels in March 2021, while in August of same year, the country managed a paltry 1.23mbpd, which was a major drop from the 1.32mbpd it produced a month earlier, while it produced 1.246mbpd in September and 1.227mb/d in October. This was at a time when the country’s had 1.6mbpd as its production output target.

 

Which way to go?

An economic analyst and Chief Executive Officer, Centre for the Promotion of Private Enterprise (CPPE), Muda Yusuf, submitted that oil theft had been thriving because of the failure of the state (government) and its institutions, adding that oil theft  is a process that demands enormous logistics,  planning and execution.

According to him, while other oil producing countries are celebrating the oil price windfalls, Nigeria’s economy is inching closer to the brink as it grapples with serious fiscal crisis, weakening foreign reserves, growing debt and depreciating exchange rate.

Describing the situation as “pathetic”, Yusuf emphasised that “this scale of criminality cannot happen if the institutions of state were not compromised”.

He regretted that several investors had exited the country because of the crass impunity of oil theft and vandalism of oil installations.

This, he further said, had made it difficult to attract major investors to the upstream segment of the industry given that the risk of investing here is very high when compared to other oil producing countries.

“How else can one explain the level of impunity that this phenomenon represents? It takes hours, if not days, to load the vessels with this stolen crude. Yet, we have no framework to curb it.This is a product of a grand conspiracy and economic sabotage,” Yusuf told The Nation.

 

Efforts

Yusuf, however, noted that the government had belatedly taken some  steps to address the problem, praying that the efforts would be sustained.

Last week, determined to tackle the oil theft embarrassment, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC) launched what it called ‘Crude Theft Monitoring Applications on the sidelines of the signing of renewed Production Sharing Contracts (PSCs) agreements between NNPC and its partners in oil mining leases.

The portal, with the address ‘stopcrudetheft.com,’ has application options for reporting incidences, with prompt follow up and responses and another one for crude sales documents validation.

The Group Chief Executive Officer (GCEO), NNPC Limited, Malam Mele Kyari, noted that “vandals” actions on pipelines had become a difficult to deal with, a reason it engaged partners to assist it

Kyari said international refineries where the stolen crude could be taken to have obligations to ensure they bought Nigerian crude from credible sources which could be validated. He said if such refineries refused to do that, they would be held responsible as part of the culprits involved, urging that in the international arena, companies must report suspicious sale.

He said every product that left the country must have a unique registration number by the NNPC and validated by the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC).

The Publisher, Africa Oil+Gas Report, Mr. Toyin Akinosho, is, however, said political will was also needed to check the menace of crude oil theft and pipeline vandalism.

“It’s very important that the state hydrocarbon company itself is announcing this. However, it is not just a question about tracking; it is actually how you deliver on ensuring that those incidents don’t happen again,” he said, adding: “There has to be the will power to deliver.’’

Eterna PLC, an energy provider, is investing in the deployment of Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) skids across some of its retail outlets, its new Managing Director/Chief Executive Director, Mr. Benjamin Nwaezeigwe, has  said.

At a parley in Lagos, he said the move was aimed at supporting  the Federal ‘s effort to deepen gas utilisation in line with the global energy transition.

“The industry is moving toward CNG and LPG and as a company we have started positioning ourselves for that. We are deploying skids and we also hope to go into LPG storage in the near future,’’ he added.

Nwaezeigwe said marketers were  facing challenges, including lack of access to foreign exchange, high bank interest rates; challenges with the sourcing of products from NNPC, unavailability of vessels to transport white fuels to depots; increased prices of freight and volatility of the naira against the American dollar.

He said this had been worsened by the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine which had created a crisis in the global oil and gas industry.

Nwaezeigwe suggested that deregulating the industry would enable more investors to come in, and lower the barriers to entry to allow the establishment of modular refineries in strategic locations.

These efforts would increase domestic refining capacity and resolve the supply challenges.

He said despite these challenges, Eterna posted a gross profit of N4.1 billion for the half year ended June 30.

The figure, which is 57.9 per cent higher than the N2.6 billion gross profit recorded in the corresponding period of last year, was achieved on the back of increased operating activities, improved efficiency, staff dedication and a new energy in the organisation brought about by the new leadership vision.

Also, the Executive Director, Corporate Services, Eterna, Mrs Phoebean Ifeadi, said the company had invested more than N20 million in the past two years in donations and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities.

“In 2022, we intend to deepen the engagement with one of our host communities in Ogun State to empower the youths in the locality. We want to empower them to get a better life and our plan will be of immense benefit to the beneficiaries,” she said.

Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Eterna Plc, Mr. Abudukerimu Sule, said Nigeria should not be carried away by the wave of the energy transition, arguing that the country’s focus at the moment should rather be on achieving energy security.

Noting that Africa ranks the least in energy consumption per capita, the CFO said it was imperative for both political and business leaders in the country to collaborate with their counterparts in other African countries to ensure massive investment in energy within the African space in the most cost-effective way.

“You can always play catch up in the renewable energy space which is the main issue as of today and to that extent, there is a new Environment, Sustainability and Governance (ESG) policy encouraging companies to report what they do in the renewable space. Majorly, collaboration should be the key answer here, where key leaders within the African region pool resources together, bringing a blend of Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG). You look at the poverty level in Africa, what do we have to go into renewable energy now? I believe energy security should be the way forward,” Sule stated.

Nwaezeigwe has traversed the oil and gas industry, accumulating about two decades of experience.

 

Women in Energy Network (WIEN) has scholarships to about 498 female students in Bille Kingdom, Rivers State to pursue their university education in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).

WIEN, an all-female group of women operating in the energy industry, gave out scholarships and science education packs to the students in the maiden edition of its Supernova Girl initiative designed to groom young women for roles in the energy and industrial sectors.

The Supernova Girl scholarship programme and science fair, which was taken deep into the riverine Bille Kingdom provided forum for WIEN to interact with all critical stakeholders in shaping girl-child education; including traditional rulers, parents, school administrators, teachers and political leaders from Rivers State.

President of WIEN, Mrs. Funmi Ogbue, said the Bille Supernova Girl Scholarship Programme and Science Fair was conceived to be a special intervention to ignite passion in young girls “and showcase the socio-economic value and application of STEM in our everyday life.”

“WIEN is confident that early contact with group will indeed spark the desire and ambition of the girl child to take a study path that will get them ready for career in the industrial sector”, she expressed. In addition to encouraging the education of rural girls in the country the Supernova Girl initiative is also intended to stimulate the thrill and zeal for innovative thinking.”

“The goal is to stimulate our children’s innate capacity and inclination to desire science education as part of our overall plan to accelerate the movement towards full optimisation of female talents in the country,” she stated.

Ogbue said that WIEN’s role was to mentor, point the way forward and partner the future champions to midwife their careers by way of providing learning aids, seminars, scholarships at some points and inspiration.

The Agbaniye-Jike XVIII, King Igbikingeri Ngwowari Cornelius Herbert, the Amayanabo of Bille Kingdom, noted that Bille was the first in the country to benefit from the Supernova Girl initiative.

He expressed appreciation of his kingdom to the women in energy for bringing such a laudable initiative to the community. “We made several appeals to the oil and gas multinationals to come and do this for us, and severally they ignored us. But now, we are getting it on a platter without having to struggle for it”, he added.

The keynote speaker, Adokiye Tombomieye, said the prevailing socio-economic situation in the post- pandemic world required that the people of female gender be given the opportunity to contribute meaningfully to the recovery and growth process along with their male counterparts.

He expressed the confidence that the objectives of the project would be realised for the good of the Bille kingdom and Nigeria in general.

As the race towards energy transition and cleaner energy intensifies, a call has been made to the government and stakeholders in the oil and gas sector to convert  flared gas into commercial use.

The Managing Director, TotalEnergies E&P Nigeria Limited, Mike Sangster, stated this at the 45th Nigerian Annual International Conference and Exhibition (NAICE) organised by the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) Nigeria Council in Lagos.

Sangster, represented at a plenary session during the event by Deputy Managing Director, Deepwater, TotalEnergies, Victor Bandele, said: “Success is when we are able to convert all gas flared into some form of use that makes sense. I work for TotalEnergies and I am proud of some steps we have taken in the past, which today is yielding something that we can point to.”

He noted some of these steps to include the upgrade of OML 58- a project embarked on by TotalEnergies since 2012. The project is about making 300 million standard cubic feet (scf) of gas pipeline available for the gas market, which ensures that anybody bringing gas for the domestic market near Port Harcourt can connect to it and also benefit from it.

“Nigeria can be said to have achieved success when gas is available, and companies can connect to such pipelines, which will in turn yield profit for the country,” Bandele said at the plenary.

The TotalEnergies chief, who emphasised the ramping up of investments in the sector, admonished the government to also cut down its operating expenses on projects in the energy sector by way of reducing time spent in the project contracting circle, maintaining that reducing period for which oil and gas projects were executed in the sector would go a long way in restoring investors’ confidence, as well as attract new and viable funding for more developmental projects.

About a fortnight ago, TotalEnergies connected Ikike which is a satellite to Amena on its OML 99. This field is estimated to have a production capacity of about 50, 000 barrels of oil equivalent daily (boed) of oil equivalent starting from now- we are ramping up.

Bandele described the project as low capital expenditure which the country needs at the moment given it is a high profit project with capability of helping to bridge the gap in production the country is currently grappling with.

“By cutting projects circle we are going to put things in perspective and bring in investments rather than repelling them. I think success is when we are extremely efficient as a country; when we are not spending five years on a project that should be executed in one year,” he added.