BusinessDay... the voice of business: Nigeria's earnings in oil and gas annual budget below N250billion

Nigeria's earnings in oil and gas annual budget below N250billion
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EJIOFOR ALIKE in Abuja on 03 February, 2008 01:00:00
 
This represents less than 20 percent of the industry spending in the country.
Gabriel Obando, co-chairman of a technical session at the Offshore West Africa
(OWA) conference revealed this at a session on sustainable development in the
oil and gas industry.
Obando lamented that despite government’s efforts to domicile a reasonable
percentage of oil and gas spending locally, much of the industry budget is
repatriated abroad.
He called on stakeholders to be more sincere in supporting government’s
efforts in ensuring that a sizeable chunk of oil and gas projects are carried
out in-country.
This, according to him, will ensure greater participation of Nigerians in oil
and gas operations, as well as ensure that not only a privileged few benefit
from the industry.
The co-chairman, who was reacting to a presentation on “Developing a
sustainable Front-End Engineering and Design (FEED) facility,” by Femi Aisida
of Shell, said the figure rose to this amount from January 2006 when government
insisted that 100 percent of FEED must be done locally.
Earlier in his speech, Aisida had said that with the government policy on local
content, the domiciliation of FEED in-country would create additional 800 jobs
in the oil and gas industry with its multiplier effect on the economy.
He lamented that due to shortage of local manpower, the FEED project for
Shell’s Bonga deepwter oil field was carried out in Dubai in 1998.