-By Danlami Nasir Isah
Lawrencia Nwadiobuma Ndupe was born in Oguta, Imo State, She attended St. Louis Grammar School, Ibadan and Federal School of Arts & Science, Lagos for her secondary and remedial education respectively and proceeded to the University of Nigeria, Nsukka where she obtained a Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.) Honours in Physics and Post Graduate Diploma (PGD) in Applied Geophysics from the University of Lagos.
Laura, as she is fondly called started her working career at NNPC 32 years ago. She held many positions amongst which were Deputy Manager Geophysics National Petroleum Investment Management Services (NAPIMS), Covering Manager Export Gas Projects Corporate Planning and Development Division of NNPC, Manager Exploration, Joint Venture Oil Operations Division of NAPIMS, and General Manager Operations, Commercial & Investment Directorate of NNPC. She was the Managing Director of NNPC Oilfield Services Limited until her appointment in July, 2019 as Chief Operating Officer, Ventures Directorate and later COO, Downstream.
Over the years, she has been engaged in numerous special assignments within the petroleum industry. Those include membership of committee on OPL to OML Conversion which ensured that relinquished blocks, after conversion, were attractive to investors, NNPC Project Manager for Erha-North which was executed ahead of schedule and with huge savings to the nation, Member of committee for Regional HTHP Studies, in collaboration with the Department of Petroleum Resources, for opening new Exploration frontiers in Deep Offshore levels of the Niger Delta.
Other major achievements of Laura during her working career was her contribution in generating over US$150 million for NNPC’s subsidiary (IDSL) through the sourcing of over 1,000 km2 land seismic acquisition jobs which critical in developing IDSL current capacity. She coordinated and ensured domestication of processing projects such that the industry now has five (5) Data Processing Centres in-country with capacity to execute big projects. She ensured the acquisition of high quality geophysical data in Nigeria and also initiated data trade amongst PSC Contractors to build synergy and save cost.
In her position as Managing Director of NNPC Oil Field Services, Laura transformed the company into a full profit-oriented autonomous Subsidiary Company of NNPC. She has attended several high profile management development and Leadership programmes both at home and abroad.
She has been a member of the prestigious Nigerian Association of Petroleum Explorationists (NAPE) since 1990 and has immensely supported NAPE by virtue of her vantage positioning in NNPC. She is also a member of other professional bodies such as the Nigerian Mining and Geosciences Society (NMGS), amongst others.