By Olujonari Takomie, in Lagos
The event aims to focus on the possible benefits to stakeholders
The Nigerian Association of Petroleum Explorationists (NAPE) has announced a workshop to highlight the opportunities in the ongoing divestments of assets by the major international companies operating in Nigeria.
The event, scheduled for July 21, 2022 in Lagos, the country’s commercial capital, “gathers critical stakeholders, decision makers and eminent speakers of the Nigerian oil & gas industry to discuss opportunities, barriers, and solutions to challenges to harness the opportunities in the Nigerian oil & gas divestments”, declares James Edet, NAPE President.
The organization says there have been multiple divestments of oil and gas assets in Nigeria’s onshore and shallow offshore areas in the last 15 years, and “the scale of these divestments keeps getting larger and more frequent”.
NAPE is a 47-year-old association of geoscientists working in the hydrocarbon industry. It is also the largest grouping of technical professionals in any of Africa’s oil and gas producing jurisdictions.
NAPE members have played a prominent part in the divestment process through time. Four of NAPE’s past Presidents have been founding CEOs of four of the country’s top 10 homegrown independent oil and gas producers.
But the proposed event is planned to be a bigger tent: involving speakers and discussants from the banking, legal, regulatory as well as the divesting international operating companies themselves.
“While we focus on the ‘why’, it is also important to focus on the possible benefits to stakeholders”, Mr. Edet (Ph.D), explains in a note.
“This workshop”, he explains, “will x-ray the Nigerian oil & gas divestment activities till-date along this discourse lines:
- Opportunities from divestment for local players, operators, servicing companies and upstream to midstream infrastructure owners.
- Solutions to key barriers, challenges, and issues that prevent access to divestment opportunities
- Implication of Divestment on National Revenue, Community Engagement and Local content
- Challenges of insecurity, crude theft, and asset decommissioning
- Funding challenges, divestment strategies and incentives
- PIA the new laws and policies; regulator’s role in divestments
- to enable the identification of opportunities for all national companies, operators, servicing companies, down-mid-upstream infrastructure owners”.
