- ‘Positioning the Oil Industry for Enhanced Performance in the New Dispensation’.
- SPE Chair, ranking PETAN Members and the Energy Commission have confirmed speaking participation
The Nigerian Association of Petroleum Explorationists (NAPE) is organizing a workshop to collate industry thinking on strategies to revamp the Nigerian oil industry and take it back on the path of profitability. “We are getting stakeholders together to offer policy and implementation strategies”, said Chikwe Edoziem, the association’s President. “We want to position the oil industry for enhanced performance in the new dispensation”.
Nigerians elected former Petroleum Minister Muhammadu Buhari on March 28, 2015. He campaigned on a platform of change. Edoziem, a former Executive Director at ExxonMobil, says the 7,000 member strong NAPE is a good platform to “help the new President negotiate the constructs of an investment-friendly petroleum sector”.
The programme is scheduled for July 14, 2015 at the Eko Hotel&Suites, which is Lagos City’s top conference venue.
Confirmed speakers for the workshop include Emeka Ene, who wears two caps as current chair of the Nigerian council of the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) as well as President of the Petroleum Technology Association of Nigeria PETAN (a body of engineering service contractors); Mohammed M. Ibrahim of the Energy Commission of Nigeria, Emeka Okwuosa, CEO of Oilserv, the country’s top oil pipeline construction firm, Seye Fadahunsi, technical director at Pillar Oil, a marginal field operator and Mene Sylvester Kogbara, a community leader from the Ogoni (oil producing) community.
Also invited to speak are Sam Amadi, CEO, Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission, Charles Odita, Chief Executive of Midwestern Oil and Gas, (daily production ~18,000BOPD), Kunle Akinkugbe, CEO, FBN Capital, a subsidiary of First Bank, arguably the largest local lender to the Energy Sector. “We wanted a very inclusive, diversity of views of professionals and investors in the upstream part of the value chain”, says Nosa Omorodion, president elect of NAPE, whose portfolio includes organizing technical meetings, workshops and conferences for the association. “NAPE is a body of geoscientists working in the oil industry”, he explains.
Issues to be covered include Energy sector reform, gas supply/investment opportunity and challenges, security of oil and gas pipelines, the challenges of the Petroleum Industry Bill, Financing issues in the upstream segment of the hydrocarbon industry, Quick win strategies to convert electricity capacity to actual generation, etc, etc. The workshop is open to Energy Bureaucrats, Oil and Gas Bankers and Lawyers, Petroleum Engineers and Petroleum Geoscientists, Energy analysts, upstream investors, oil producing communities and members of the legislature.
“We want to generate a communique that will succinctly light up the path for the next four years”, says Omorodion, whose daytime job is as Director, Nigerian Independents at Schlumberger, “only a broad church of intellectually savvy speakers and discussants can help with that and that’s what we have”.
