The over $30 billion being spent annually on importation of petroleum products into has attracted condemnation from 292 gas experts at an international gas conference anchored in the University of Port Harcourt.
The experts have placed a demand on the Federal Government to end importation of the products and also facilitate the completion of the Dangote Refinery, in Lekki, Lagos.
The 5th international conference on gas, refining and petrochemicals organised by the Centre for Gas, Refining and Petrochemicals (CGRP), University of Port Harcourt, in collaboration with the Nigerian Society of Chemical Engineers (NSCHE) which took place recently, featured experts, drawn from Nigerian Refining Companies, Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas Limited (NLNG), Indorama, Notore, academia, NGOs, and policymakers across the world.
Participants at the conference were eager to see the nation’s downstream sector working again, and impacting positively on Nigeria’s economy.
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The international experts rejected Nigeria’s continued dependence on importation and the impact on scarce foreign exchange, the economy, and loss of job opportunities.
They observed also that privatisation and PublicPrivate Partnerships (PPP) have proven to be excellent economic models as seen at Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) Limited, Indorama Eleme Petrochemicals Limited and Notore Chemical Industries Limited.
It was observed that equity participation of host communities as in the Indorama Eleme model remains the hope for security and harmony in the communities for the corporations to grow.
The conference called on the presidency and the ministry of petroleum resources to, as a matter of priority, discourage the importation of petroleum products.
“All efforts should be made to get the nation’s four refineries back on stream either through PPP as in the NLNG model or privatisation as in the Indorama and Notore models.
Operators of the downstream industry should adopt reliability-centred maintenance practices (RCMP) as this will enhance their plants and operations for sustainable on-stream availability and high capacity utilisation.
“The Federal Government should ensure more private sector participation in the downstream sector to encourage the effective harnessing of the nation’s gas and hydrocarbon potentials.
“The federal ministry of education and the National Universities Commission ( NUC) should collaborate with the universities to change the curriculum to inculcate big data, digitization and artificial intelligence in learning and research. This will produce the needed manpower of the future downstream sector of the oil and gas industry,” the experts said in a communique issued at the end of the conference.
They called on the government to make all efforts to facilitate the availability of enough natural gas to support Indorama’s and Notore’s production of petrochemicals (polymers) and fertilisers, which are the engine room of both the industrial and agricultural sectors of Nigeria.
The communiqué which was signed by the acting vice-chancellor of the University of Port Harcourt, Stephen Okodudu; chairman of the governing board of the CGRP, Anthony Ogbuigwe; president of the National Association of NSCHE, Anochie Otaraku.
