New African Crude Oil Frontiers Eager to Dislodge Nigeria

BY Chineme Okafor

Executive Director of A-Z Petroleum Products Limited, Prof. Charles Ofoegbu, has stated that some African countries that recently found crude oil deposits within their frontiers were eagerly looking forward to leveraging possible slips from Nigeria in repositioning her oil and gas industry.

Ofoegbu said in an interview with journalists in Abuja that perhaps, Nigeria’s lack of will-power to move her crude oil sector away from its current passive condition which hurts and prevent further investments in the sector could soon become a favourable excuse for investors to reroute attention and funds to these new crude oil frontiers.

Speaking on the status of Nigeria’s oil and gas industry; issues relating to the passage of the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) and deregulation of the country’s downstream petroleum sector, Ofoegbu noted that local and international investments that could advance Nigeria’s oil and gas sector are being held back by obvious regulatory uncertainties.

He explained that the PIB, which is currently before the National Assembly remained the probable means to unlock further investments for the sector amidst stiff competition in global oil market, adding that without certainty in the industry which the PIB is expected to provide, Nigeria may yet witness further decay in her oil and gas sector.

“Agreed that our reserve is large because of our land mass but unless we do something urgently, the industry will continue to decay, we are only relaxed because we have so much reserve and produce so much crude oil that is substantially siphoned but I tell you, time will come when we will feel the pinch.

With the advent of a lot of frontier states such as Ghana, Sierra Leone, Liberia  and all the states around us in the west and east coastland, majority of these oil majors will soon begin to relinquish their assets due to unfavourable terms of business,” he said.

Ofoegbu added: “Shell as you know had sold out some of its assets and it is even complaining of unfavourable business climate, then of course, it tells on the country that unless we begin to reengineer the sector and change managers of the industry, in five years time, activities of the sector with the rise of new frontiers will obviously mean that it is not going to be business as usual for Nigeria.

"We need to put round pegs in round holes, get the right people in the right place, otherwise we will pay dearly for that; our aviation sector has said it all as this is where airlines without insurance certificates and adherence to standard operational procedures are allowed to operate and somebody somewhere is supposed to regulate them.”