By Fred Akanni, Editor
Egbert Imomoh, Chairman of the London listed Afren Plc. and President of the Society of Petroleum Engineers Worldwide, will deliver the Keynote address at the annual industry workshop of the Nigerian Association Of Petroleum Explorationists(NAPE) scheduled for November 10, 2013.
The theme is: From Marginal Field To Acreage Divestment: The Growth Story of the Nigerian E&P Independent.
Funsho Kupolokun, former GMD of the state hydrocarbon company, NNPC, will chair the proceedings.
Kupolokun superintended the most transparent bid round in the country’s petroleum rights history between 12 to 10 years ago. Imomoh was deputy managing director of Shell Nigeria who, upon retirement, co-founded Afren nine years ago. Afren’s major competency is its ease of working with Nigerian independents.
The workshop will discuss the operational and business environment in which Nigerian homegrown E&P companies are working.
“The Shell divestment has built on the marginal field experiment of 10 years ago”, says Adedoja Ojelabi, President Elect of NAPE and Chairman of the Conference Planning Committee, of which the workshop is a part. “We want to understand the growth of the Nigerian indigenous E&P operating space. We want to sit down with Bankers, Lawyers, Oilfield Economists and other professionals involved in these unique aspects of value creation”.
Abulrazaq Isa, Chairman of Waltersmith, a 4,000Barrels of Oil Per Day operator, has sent word confirming he will be part of the proceedings.
Bright Okogwu, director general of the budget office of the Federation, has been invited to be chair of one of the two sessions at the workshop. “He brings both a mix of World Bank perspective as well as insider working of Government to the story”, says Nosa Omorodion, General Manager Local Content at Schlumberger, who is a member of the organizing committee.
The first leg of the workshop features a number of papers to be presented by local as well as international speakers. Alex Oti, Managing Director of Diamond Bank, is an invitee to that leg. So also is Energia Ltd, the Nigerian independent which is operating the Ebendo marginal Field.
Energia has drilled three wells and has a production capacity of 7,500BOPD, of which it is producing 3,500BOPD, due largely to crude evacuation constraints. The company has constructed a modular gas plant and is working on –with Midwestern Oil and Gas-acrude oil pipeline, as an alternative to the crude transportation route that leads to the Agip export terminal at Kwale.The new pipeline, expected to be commissioned in First quarter 2014, takes Energia’s and Midwestern Oil &Gas’s crude to Shell’s export facility at Eriemu.
The second leg of the event is expected to feature Ladi Balogun, Chief Executive of First City Monument Bank, Waltersmith as well as Britania U, the only marginal field operator producing from an offshore field. Britannia U is one of the four highest marginal field producers. It is delivering 5,000BOPD from Ajapa field. This will be followed by a 45-minute question and answer session involving all the participants.
The NAPE Pre-Conference workshop was launched by NAPE in 1990, to open up the association to the general business environment. The first set of industry ‘elders’ were retiring from the multinational companies. The workshop was meant to help NAPE members interface with the larger issues of the Nigerian economy. “This is where we were meant to treat topics that are broader than inversion seismic attributes and basin analysis”, explains Omorodion.
The workshop took off with the theme Indigenous Entrepreneurship in the Upstream Sector of the Nigeria Petroleum Industry in 1990. In the 23 years since, it has examined, among others, Financing The Upstream Sector, Opportunities and Risks(1991)Building Real Indigenous Capacity for the Nigerian Petroleum Industry(2001), Nigerian Content: Capacity Building and Utilization(2006), Special Workshop On The PIB(2009) and The Nigerian Content Law: Application and Implications(2010) .
“We think it’s an opportune time for NAPE to invite the entire industry, as well as Nigeria’s business professionals, in Banks and related spaces, to interrogate the species named The Nigerian E&P independent”, Ojelabi remarks.
Members of the Committee assigned the task of delivering the workshopinclude Mrs. Patricia Ochogbu of ExxonMobil and Messrs. George Oguachuba(TOTAL), Gilbert Odior(ExxonMobil), Isaac Arowolo(Chevron), Nedo Osanyande(Shell) Bashir Koledoye(D’Harmattan Energy Services) and Austin Avuru(SEPLAT). Three of the seven member strong committee are former Presidents of NAPE. “We needed to have an influential committee to deliver a high impact workshop”, Ojelabi concludes.
