… commends NCDMB for milestone achievements
Special Adviser to the President on Energy, Olu Arowolo Verheijen on Tuesday in Yenegoa, Bayelsa State gave reasons why President Bola Tinubu issued Presidential Directives 41 & 42 in February 2024.
According to her, the Presidential Directives were focused on local content compliance requirements, eliminating briefcase intermediaries, reducing petroleum-sector contracting costs and timelines, improving the ease of doing business, and repositioning Nigeria as the premier investment destination for oil and gas in Africa.
The special Adviser who delivered the key note address on the theme: ‘Streamlining Project Delivery for Improved Efficiency’ at the ongoing Practical Nigerian Content holding in Yenegoa, Balysa State, explained that the combined reforms introduced over the last two years enabled Nigeria to secure three of the four major FIDs recorded in Africa in 2024 and propelled her into the top quartile among 14 comparable global oil and gas jurisdictions.
“Efficient project delivery sits at the core of Nigeria’s upstream energy reforms. Project economics must remain competitive, timelines must be credible, and capital must be deployed with confidence. And a pragmatic, outcome focused local content regulations plus guidelines must be an accelerator of these objectives. Local content was never meant to be an end in itself; it is intended to be a means to a national outcome, projects delivered at scale, on schedule, and at competitive cost,” he stated.
She stated that achieving streamlined project delivery demands collective effort; is not the responsibility of a single actor in the value chain. Federal and state governments, private sector players, financiers, local communities, all must work in aligned cooperation to guarantee project success.
“On our part as government, we have approached this responsibility with clarity and intention. In crafting our Presidential Directives, we adopted a data-driven modelling and benchmarking process to understand precisely how local content requirements influenced overall project costs. Our task was to design a system that eliminates rent-seeking while preserving the true meaning of local content: empowering Nigerian talent, enabling indigenous enterprise, strengthening national competitiveness and fostering capacity building amongst Nigerian Service providers to enable them compete for jobs across the continent and beyond.”
As the NCDMB advances towards its ambitious target of 70 percent in-country value retention, she said, “we must ensure that the journey is not reduced to box-ticking. It must consistently deliver tangible value, to the industry, to host communities, and to the wider Nigerian economy.”
According to her, from experience, it is truly energizing to witness local content functioning as an engine of long-term growth and enhanced efficiency. Nigeria’s success stories are numerous: fabrication yards such as SHI-MCI; thriving free zones like LADOL; modular refining pioneers like Waltersmith.
“The Egina FPSO raised the bar for local engineering and fabrication, achieving about 55,000 tonnes of in-country fabrication, representing nearly two-thirds of its total fabricated scope. NLNG Train 7 stands as another powerful illustration of what Nigerian content can deliver, with extensive local fabrication and engineering now underway. The Nigerian Oil and Gas Parks Scheme, spearheaded by the NCDMB, is creating dedicated manufacturing hubs to produce essential equipment and components for the industry.
Since the enactment of the Nigerian Oil and Gas Industry Content Development (NOGICD) Act in 2010, in-country value retention has increased ten-fold, from five percent to 56 percent today. Similarly, the share of Nigerian-owned marine vessels servicing the industry has expanded from less than 10 percent in 2010 to almost 50 percent today.
These indicators are more than statistics; they testify to what Nigerians can accomplish when given opportunity. They also serve as powerful motivation to scale even greater heights. We must never forget that behind every local content achievement lies a human story. Each new fabrication facility, producing pipes, panels, safety gear, and other vital materials, translates into livelihoods transformed: jobs created, incomes expanded, suppliers empowered, and host communities uplifted. As companies grow, they stimulate not only technical roles but also a wide ecosystem of non-technical opportunities across ICT, insurance, catering, transportation, and more.”
She said as Nigeria enters a new cycle of upstream investment, with three major FIDs recorded in the last 18 months: TotalEnergies’ Ubeta gas project, Shell’s Bonga North deepwater development, and Shell’s HI gas project, this is the moment to recommit to strengthening local content as a catalyst for the smooth and timely delivery of the transformational projects ahead.
“Ultimately, our national objectives remain clear: to achieve three million barrels per day of crude oil and 10 billion standard cubic feet per day of gas by 2030. To get there, we must unlock every viable project. Regulators must shed legacy mindsets and act as enablers of speed, clarity, and efficiency. Financing models must become more innovative and more ambitious. The Nigerian Content Intervention Fund must expand both its impact and its dynamism.”