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Nigeria still struggling to grow local oil capacities

By BusinessNews Staff on March 24, 2014

The country is still struggling to grow local capacities in the oil and gas industry, an achievement that had been recorded in other parts of the world.

The Group Managing Director, Arco Group, Mr. Alfred Okoigun, said this while delivering a speech at the Oil and Gas Conference in Abuja.

He said government should have been doing more at this time, stressing that, “If they had done so before now, maybe Nigeria would have been exporting locals as experts to other countries by now.

“Good enough, the present government in Nigeria has started to roll back the inertia of the past. It enacted the Nigerian Oil and Gas Content Development Law in 2010.”

He said the industry’s initial conception of the law was not encouraging, but expressed joy that government did not just put the law in place but also ensured that the agencies put in charge were monitoring the situation.

He said, “I will at this point commend Shell Petroleum for being currently active in supporting the law. Examples of what the company is doing on the growth of local capacity are all over the place in the industry.

“Arco Group has indeed been working with Total towards the realisation of the objectives of the Law. Our relationships with other oil majors are showing signs along the same direction.”

He, therefore, appealed to all concerned to recognize the changing trends in the oil and gas industry in Nigeria and facilitate it instead of looking for loopholes to circumvent it.

[Punch]

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