March, 2021
In 2018, the Egina FPSO was commended for having the highest amount of local content completed for any oil and gas project in Nigeria.
One of the major concerns of the Nigerian government which led to the establishment of the Nigerian Local Content Act in 2010, was capital flight occasioned by repatriation of revenue from oil and gas exploration and production activities in addition to increased industry expenditure on importation of fabrication, welding & related services.
“The government’s primary objective for the development of Nigerian content in the Nigerian oil and gas industry aims at increasing Indigenous participation and promoting technology transfer; invariably resulting in increased funding initiatives to domestic companies and improved
infrastructural development in the upstream and downstream sectors.“
After a decade of this Act, we explore just how much impact it has had on all the players in the ecosystem and we weigh the level of success it has had in terms of achieving the goals set by those who enacted it. Looking at the players in isolation, we discovered more Nigerians are indeed participating in the industry now, for example, this is evidenced by the contribution of local independent operators to crude oil production activities. They have contributed about 23% of the total crude production in the country, a much higher proportion compared to the 5% they contributed prior to the Act. However, putting the pieces together and scratching beneath the surface
unearths a disturbing reality. Production of raw materials in-country is being faced by many issues and this seriously bottlenecks the success of the Act.
This gives us a cause for concern. It is not all doom and gloom, though. We believe steps can easily be retraced and the Nigerian Content Development
and Monitoring Board is already on its way to plugging these holes, albeit slowly.
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