In order to key properly into the local content law and enjoy its full benefits this year, indigenous players in the oil and gas sector, especially the indigenous ship owners have been advised to acquire more vessels that will allow them get allocations to lift Nigeria’s oil and gas products.
This advice was dropped last week by the Chief Executive Officer of an indigenous oil and gas company; Ocean Glory Commodities Limited, Rev. Cole Chiori in an exclusive chat with Shipping Position Daily in Lagos.
In order to key properly into the local content law and enjoy its full benefits this year, indigenous players in the oil and gas sector, especially the indigenous ship owners have been advised to acquire more vessels that will allow them get allocations to lift Nigeria’s oil and gas products.
This advice was dropped last week by the Chief Executive Officer of an indigenous oil and gas company; Ocean Glory Commodities Limited, Rev. Cole Chiori in an exclusive chat with Shipping Position Daily in Lagos.
Rev. Cole said that the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) is willing to engage Nigerian vessels in lifting imported products into Nigeria, but the only problem is that there are not enough vessels from the indigenous ship owners to carry the quantity of the commodity NNPC needs to carry.
He advised that in 2012, indigenous ship owners should come together, theme up and finance the acquisition of more vessels and bigger ones so as to compete favourably with the International Oil Companies (IOCs) that have taken over their jobs.
In his words, “the NNPC is trying to encourage indigenous ship owners to get vessels that can carry their commodity but the only problem we are having here is lack of trust, acquiring a vessel is not a Childs play, if men and companies can come together and theme up to buy a good vessel, the NNPC is ready to do business with the indigenous ship owners, but the problem is that the vessels are too few, and that is why you see the multinational taking over the industry”. “I am not talking about the standard; I am talking about the number” he stressed.
Though indigenous vessel owners have over the years complained about lack of patronage by the NNPC in the lifting petroleum products, Rev. Cole disagreed, saying that the true situation is that “Nigeria does not have vessel that can cope with the level of fuel importation in the country; in order words the volume of fuel coming into this country, Nigerian vessels cannot carry it”.
“The ship-owners association don’t have such vessels that can carry the quantity of fuel and gas needed in this country, so that is why the NNPC patronizes other bigger companies and they keep on cheating Nigerians, if you go to the Benin offshore, the Lagos offshore, bigger vessels go there and do ship to ship transfer, after this the mother vessel will go away without paying anything to the Nigerian government, but if they can theme up and have bigger tankers, NNPC is ready to do business with us”.
He commended President Goodluck Jonathan for his intention in the removal of subsidy on fuel saying that with the removal of subsidy, government is trying to create room for infrastructural development.
In his view, the country may not get the instant benefits of the gains today but that, “a time is coming if what the government is doing today is properly implemented and managed, a liter of fuel will cost less than N50” Rev. Cole assured.
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