-By Sopuruchi Onwuka
The highly orchestrated global coalition on climate action to avert looming environmental catastrophe, and the related transition from fossil fuels to low carbon energy logically require the existing courses of study at Nigerian petroleum institutes to broaden their curricula or recede into obsolescence.
Whereas the role of petroleum in the long term global energy mix remains a subject of heated debates, the reality of energy transition from fossil fuels has become very convincing, as world’s leading oil producing countries and global multinational oil majors have all reached advanced states in their business portfolio diversification.
Key industrialised countries that currently consume the bulk of global petroleum production have set emission reduction targets and deadlines for phasing out internal combustion engines that burn fuels in automobiles across the globe form the biggest demand for refinery products.
Europe, for instance, has set 2050 as deadline for total switch to electric vehicles, while the United States has set 2035 as the deadline for end in the production of internal combustion engines for vehicles.
Already, all the global vehicle manufacturing brands have stopped building new production lines for engines, while at the same time establishing new production plants or modifying existing ones to serve for mass production of electric vehicles as they race to meet regulatory deadlines in key markets for new vehicles.
Maritime standards for shipping fuels have also changed in recognition of global sentiments against emissions from transport vehicles. The new emissions standards from the International Maritime Organization (IMO) designed to curb emissions produced by maritime shipping came into effect on January 1, 2020. The new standards specifically limit the acceptable levels of sulfur in ship fuel, making it increasingly mandatory for shippers to start changing their fleet from use of heavy oils to use of natural gas.
Our search shows that several experimental flights by many companies are also ongoing on commercial electric planes even though smaller prototypes have been flown across short distances in the past. Basically powered by supply by mainly batteries or solar cells electrically powered model aircraft have been flown since the 1970s.
From coal to gas and renewable sources, electricity generation that would form the power basis for new transportation and other applications are also coming under scrutiny for emissions. And the focus on cleaner energy sources has put natural gas also on longer term transition list.
The global aggression against fossil fuel and the push for speedy energy are intensified by the prevailing changes in climatic conditions that manifest in wildfires, flooding, and heatwaves in different parts of the world. And these impacts have also accelerated pursuit of commitments by nations and energy firms to emission reduction.
From Norwegian Equinor to Saudi Aramco, French TotalEnergies and even indigenous Seplat, oil companies are shifting from core petroleum business to diversified energy production, shifting future emphasis from petroleum assets to new energy acquisitions. Even the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) is considering a name change to reflect its energy diversification plans.
Industry experts and regulators in Nigeria have also started raising concern about capacity diversification in the energy industry to prepare the country for the emerging shift in demand and also position for the new global energy race.
Nigeria once had a Ministry of Energy whose role expanded from Ministry of Petroleum Resources. The ministry was, however, compressed back to petroleum resources. Thus, the emerging industry capacity challenges lay strong agenda for the Ministry of Petroleum Resources and its agencies that hold mandates for capacity development.
From Petroleum technology Development Trust Fund (PTDF) to Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB), Oil and Gas Trainers Association (OGTAN), government’s training institutions and conventional colleges; the prevailing energy transition presents a curriculum challenge.
The shifting and expanding capacity requirements primarily count the cost of delay chiefly for the PTDF which has constantly remained under performance appraisal for huge funds deployed in its activities as the nation’s first established petroleum industry capacity development agency. Concerns have sustained that huge funds managed by the PTDF have primarily patronized foreign training institutions; and products of the trainings sponsored by the agency hardly reconnect with the local petroleum industry.
It might be in the foreground of this that PTDF embarked on building two institutions: the National Institute of Petroleum Studies (NIPS) in Kaduna and the Center for Skills Development and Training (CSDT) in Port Harcourt. But again the two training centers have remained in project quagmire for nearly a decade, and may now require concept reevaluation under the prevailing demand for new energy.
Until recently when Valuechain reported doldrums at the NIPS project site, the PDTF appeared to have forgotten the project for which the Kaduna State government provided about 90 hectares of land.
The over N15 billion project, awarded in 2009, which was conceptualised to provide a world-class training and convention centre for the petroleum industry has suffered protracted delays from the original projection of three year realisation target. The NIPS was conceived to offer refresher courses for executive level industry managers to bring them to par with changing industry trends.
The NIPS was also planned to provide fresh graduates with hands-on technical internship trainings to ultimately equip them with requisite experience for field engagement.
Also, the institute was conceived to be an institutional framework for domesticating some of the PTDF’s training programmes in-country. And considering the huge amount of money it requires to pay for foreign scholarships, it would be logical to optimize the resources by domiciling PTDF’s trainings in-country and provide greater opportunity for more participants.
Analysts say that the NIPS project was already placed on the launch pad for PTDF given that it was an active training programme initiated by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) which operated from a temporary site along Yahaya Road in Kaduna GRA, before it was allocated land by the Kaduna State Government for the development of its permanent site at the Trade Fair complex layout in Rigachukun area of Igabi local government of the state.
The PTDF initially developed the centre into the National College of Petroleum Studies Kaduna which later morphed into NIPS. Apart from academic structures, the institute hosts a convention centre with capacity for international conferences including a five-star hotel, students’ hostels, residential buildings, staff school, a clinic and maintenance yard. It also has a mosque, a chapel, indoor sports hall, international conference centre, auditorium and shopping arcade.
Valuechain reports the project consultant, Arc Mohammed Dewu, as saying that the NIPS project is still on course for realization.
Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna State laments that the project has been caught in the Nigerian factor of non-urgency.
“A lot of work has been done, billions of naira has been sunk, but what is sad is that the investment is being allowed to remain uncompleted and not put into use, and this is a sad Nigerian story,” El-Rufai said.
Valuechain’s independent investigations has revealed that the long-awaited project has reached its final stage of construction, perhaps waiting for commissioning, but the avoidable delay come with a cost. It was gathered that the project has mustered an additional N1 billion as a result of inflation adjustment in the cost of building materials.
Again, work on the Center for Skills Development and Training (CSDT) also initiated by the PTDF in Port Harcourt was abandoned since 2014 until the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB) sought partnership with ANOH Gas Processing Limited to revive the project.
The ANOH Gas Processing Limited is an IJV owned equally between Seplat Energy Plc. and the Nigerian Gas Company (NGC), a subsidiary of Nigerian National Petroleum Corp. (NNPC).
Both NIPS, the CSDT was conceived by PTDF to train and increase the competence and capabilities of Nigerians to meet the low-to-middle level human resources needs of the Nigerian oil and gas industry.
Executive Secretary of NCDMB, Simbi Wabote, stated that the agency which is visibly practical with its capacity growth interventions in the petroleum industry drafted the CSDT into the board’s Capacity Development Initiative (CDI) projects.
He explained that the “CDI projects are utilized in collaboration with operators and service providers in the oil and gas industry to address identified gaps in local capacities and seize opportunities to grow local capabilities.”
He expressed belief that making the facility functional will promote skills development and attainment of one of the Board’s mandate of developing local capacities and capabilities and the Technical Capacity Development Pillar of the 10-year strategic roadmap.
“Globally, achievement of the local content agenda is hinged on domiciling value-adding activities and this is heavily dependent on locally available skilled manpower. It is in recognition of the critical role that skilled manpower plays in the development of local content that the Board has Technical Capability Development as one of the strategic pillars of its 10-Year Strategic Roadmap.” Wabote said.
Managing Director, Anoh Gas Processing Company Limited, Mr. Okechukwu Mba said the company decided to partner with the NCDMB to contribute to the development of skilled professionals for the oil and gas sector.
“I am particularly happy for the benefits the country stands to gain from the completion of this facility. It will produce youths equipped with relevant skills they require to pursue a rewarding career in the oil and gas industry.”
He said the completion of the CSDT was part of the company’s $10million Capacity Development Initiative commitment made on the back of the development of the 300MMscfd capacity ANOH gas processing plant, located on OML 53 in Imo State.
Valuechain reports that lingering completion of government’s centres of excellence for industry skills acquisition has limited training opportunities to few institutes including the Petroleum Training Institute at Effurun, Warri, Delta State. Other conventional training centres in the country, are sponsored interventions by oil and gas companies such asTotalEnergies, Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) Limited and other companies.
Almost every oilfield services company in the country has a training unit to cater for its human capital needs.
Besides internal self help by individual oilfield service contractors, there are over 2000 professional industry skills training companies assisting with polishing fresh Nigerian university graduates for field deployment. The companies herded under the umbrella of Oil and Gas Trainers Association (OGTAN), functions primarily, to fill skills gaps that exist in conventional colleges and universities in Nigeria.
Mr. Wabote has severally charged members of OGTAN to tailor their services towards closing capacity gaps in the domestic industry operations to curb outsourcing of job to foreign countries.
Valuechain reports that the Nigerian Oil and Gas Industry Content Development (NOGICD) Law 2010 provides preferential consideration for indigenous goods and services on the condition that capacity for job delivery exists in-country.
On his own, the Group Managing Director of NNPC, Mallam Mele Kyari, charged the industry to lay capacity and skills agenda for the Nigerian universities and colleges. He made it clear that the nation’s education system must be positioned to deliver high quality products.
He stated in a presentation to the Senate Committee on Local Content that capacity issues remain the biggest hurdle to cross in the drive for policy targets, adding that principal objective of the local content policy is to use Nigeria’s upstream petroleum industry budget to cut operations cost and create multiplier effects that propel domestic economic growth through job creation, patronage of local goods and services as well as create demand basis for investments in domestic industrial productivity.
He revealed that one of the factors that usually lead to high cost of projects in the industry is usually attributed to employees training by individual oil service companies in the country.
Mallam Kyari demanded the legislators to extend the local content law beyond the oil and gas industry to other sectors of the nation’s economy to enhance inter-sectoral linkages.
While speaking in one of the corporation’s recent interventions, Kyari said it is in view of the challenges in the industry such as difficulties in exploration and exploitation of energy resources, high rate of reserve depletion, and limited human and local content capacity, that NNPC entered into an agreement with the Ibrahim Badamasi Babandida (IBB) University Lapai, to establish an endowment fund to enable strategic research into studies that will improve oil and gas exploration in the country.
The partnership between NNPC and IBB University was strengthened recently by the commissioning of a Geological Research Centre at the university, which was named after the immediate past Group Managing Director of the NNPC, late Dr Maikanti Kachalla Baru. The project which was initiated by the late GMD in 2019 was 100 per cent funded by the corporation and executed under NNPC Professional Chair Endowment for strategic research, targeted at providing innovative and robust solutions required for repositioning the industry for greater efficiency and effective service delivery.
Also supporting the argument for broader application of the Nigerian Content policy across the whole economy, the Executive Secretary, Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board, Engr. Simbi Wabote called on all players in the energy industry to prepare for disruptive technologies associated with energy transition and artificial intelligence.
With traditional factors of production giving way to new ways of thinking, and enterprises adopt smarter ways of running their operations; Nigeria must begin early to align with visible transition into the fourth industrial revolution, he warned.
He noted that the provision of the world-class platform would facilitate education, training, mentorship, infrastructure, and long-term capital to entrepreneurs and start-ups in technology-enabled sectors.
Our review indicates strongly that with about 30 years to a major demand shift to low emission energy, multinational petroleum investors and oil producing countries are also beginning to shift position to accommodate new energy in preparation for demand transition.
Every section of the industry in Nigeria agree on the urgent need to expand and reposition the nation’s industry skills development centers to prepare the domestic energy industry for the imminent crew change associated with energy transition. But while the preparations for the transition seems obvious in the operations of the multinational oil companies, the big question remains does the nation’s oil and gas capacity development agencies and institutions have any curriculum agenda for petroleum institutes in the country?