PARTNER CONTENT
The Nigerian engineer Gbenga Komolafe, will be delivering the first of the four quarterly dinner lectures of the Petroleum Club of Lagos for 2023.
The chief executive of the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) will be speaking to the theme Nigerian Upstream Sector: Dialetic of Value Optimisation, Energy Transition and Regulatory Perspectives.
The Petroleum Club, a 16-year-old private club where industry leaders and the technical elite interact, unwind and share ideas on issues concerning the sector, reached out to Mr. Komolafe to deliver the opening dinner lecture.
The event, scheduled for February 16, 2023 at the Civic Centre in Lagos, is “a special oil industry dinner”, declares Austin Avuru, Chairman of the Petroleum club. “We are inviting the entire industry to engage the regulator. We are looking towards a very interactive event”.
The enthusiasm for the meeting is mutual.
NUPRC, on its part, says that its Chief Executive, looks forward to “the opportunity to unveil the Commission’s comprehensive plans to reset and invigorate the industry”.
The NUPRC is a creation of the Petroleum Industry Act(PIA) which was passed in August 2021. The PIA vests enormous powers on the two regulatory agencies, of which NUPRC is one. It also creates a field in which the NNPC is no longer the be all and end all of the industry, but a commercial player that is regulated by both NUPRC and the NMDPRA (Nigerian Midstream, Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority). Mr Komolafe’s position, by the spirit of the act, is a very influential one.
Komolafe has a lot on his plate; he is running two bid rounds (one for deepwater asset, the other for natural gas flare sites); he is overseeing drafts of regulations that will govern sectors of the industry that NUPRC regulates, based in the Petroleum Industry Act. His NUPRC has just awarded licences to conclude the 2020-2022 marginal field round. He has taken over at a time when national crude oil output has agressively been heading south.
