Featured Gas Oil

Streamline: DPR clears stakeholders’ agitation

By Olamilekan FAWAS

The attention of the DPR has been drawn to a publication in the Punch Newspaper of 3rd December 2018 in which some purported stakeholders were urging the Federal Government to streamline the functions of the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR), which in their own view, were not justifiable, in addition to a few other reasons. This rejoinder has therefore become necessary to better enlighten the public about the lack of substance in the said avoidable negative campaign.

While the management and staff of the Department of Petroleum Resources have absolutely no issues with self-help efforts of any stakeholders, we are however surprised that these particular group runs at cross-purposes with the lofty intentions that the DPR wrongly assumed they were coming to the oil and gas industry with. While we expected the non-governmental institutions to bring on board innovation and value-addition into solving any of the emerging real problems of the industry, in terms of cheaper, locally researched technology and their collaborating governmental agency to suggest novel and selfless solutions, or to share experience with the DPR on how similar problems in their various industries have been solved, even if for a fee, the two groups are rather seen forming detestable alliances with abhorrent propositions. They always come up with one resolution only, which is that, one traditional function or the other of the DPR should be removed and given to another existing government agency or to a new one to be formed. And the DPR function that has suffered the most is its HSE function, particularly the Environmental bit.

The general public is hereby invited to put this noxious and unfriendly attitude side-by-side with the open-handed and encouraging attitude of the DPR in welcoming and encouraging Nigerians from all works of life to innovate anything at all that can solve one problem or the other in the oil and gas industry and make good profit for themselves. As a good example, the DPR recently bent over backwards to host and educate a group of university dons from about seven institutions from around the country on the industry-standard environmental studies management process when they showed interest in conducting environmental studies for an operator. In spite of their glaring technical and administrative inadequacies the DPR decided to go ahead and register them because of its special interest and fondness for research institutions, and therefore promised to process their permits within seventy-two (72) hours if they could provide some simplified requisites. Behold, three months running, not a single one of the seven universities has returned for the promised largesse. While we were still struggling to figure out what was amiss, the next thing we saw in the papers was that a certain university don was leading a team of “stakeholders” to advise government to wrest the environmental function from the DPR.

To start with, the professor in question from Afe Babalola University, is not neither familiar, nor does he resonate with any great achievements in the oil and gas industry to qualify him as a commentator on the competence or otherwise of the DPR.

The publication in question mentioned four main complaints by the collection of “civil society organisations and several government agencies” as follows:

  1. An insinuation about the DPR not being efficient or effective because its functions are not streamlined.
  2. According to them, the issuance of licenses for the drilling of crude and policing of the oil and gas sector, as currently handled by the DPR were not in line with international best practice.

iii. Although they consider the environmental lawbook (EGASPIN) created by the DPR to be impeccable, yet they complain that the writers of the document are not good enough to implement it because of what they described as “weak framework”!

  1. They complained about lack of transparency in the work of the DPR and that most of the stakeholders interviewed mentioned that working with or obtaining information from the DPR is almost an impossible task!

From the mere sound of it, these arguments fall to the realms of “perceived” problems which are obviously sponsored concoction and exaggeration. Nonetheless, we will provide verifiable answers to all, so the public can be the judge.

Concerning the insinuation that the DPR is not effective, it is not clear what exact criteria were used. However, if the KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) used are to stem from the functions and objectives of the organization, then the DPR is nothing short of effective and efficient for the following reasons:

– The government of Nigeria has not been defrauded of revenues due to it because the DPR ensures payment by small, big and intermediate companies, both local and multinational.

– Nigeria meets its export quota to the extent that is humanly manageable despite the socioeconomic and security challenges facing the country.

– No project in the industry comes on stream except after the DPR has ensured environmental due diligence. Interestingly most companies complain that the DPR EIA process is more stringent than what’s obtainable at the Federal Ministry of Environment. That is a deliberate effort by the DPR because it has access to vital information that is not obtainable elsewhere in the entire country. Such information include details of the engineering designs of projects, which are all reviewed, approved and monitored by the DPR to the highest international standards. No good EIA can be written without them. And the operators know this. Conversely, there are stringent punitive measures for defaulters, which range from heavy fines to withdrawal of operating permits and licenses.

– Through stringent and strategic operations monitoring and regulation, the DPR has been able to keep hazardous incidents very low while also not relenting on research into new frontiers such as a conscious effort to end the discharge of produced water into our near-shore waters, however harmless that may currently appear.

– The icing on the cake, however, is the fact that, the DPR consciously provides a level playing ground for our indigenous investors to compete with multinationals. We also continue to consciously tolerate our local environmental consultants while continuously building their currently low capacity. While our research institutions have the human capacity and mind for research, they are poorly equipped and out of touch with the oilfield realities. This is the gap we are trying to bridge while they on the other hand are being wrongly used for cheap lobby by the so-called civil society organisations and their sponsors.

Concerning the protesting stakeholders’ complaint about functions of the DPR not being streamlined, it becomes immediately obvious that they don’t understand what it takes to have a good Sustainable Development (SD) balance. The above-stated KPIs of the DPR would not have been achievable if the environment (or indeed HSE) leg of the oil & gas monitoring were to be absent in the mix of functions. The logic here is that, full-fledged divisions of the DPR handle the different legs of the sustainable development (SD) while the Director of Petroleum Resources continues to provide the steer to ensure achievement of the desired economic, social and environmental objectives. Unknown to the advocates of streamlining, if the environment (or HSE) function should leave the DPR to another Ministry, the SD balance would be completely distorted. No other agency of government can successfully do that SD function because it is either such an agency has only one leg of the SD balance or the other, but never the three combined as the DPR has. So, what the groups have tagged as an aberration and error of the National Assembly and the Executive is actually a deliberate, strategic and informed decision to have a capable agency carry out that critical role using the three inseparable legs.

Concerning their point about the issuance of licenses for the drilling of crude and policing of the oil and gas sector by the DPR not being in line with international best practice, there are two pertinent questions to ask. The first is whether Nigeria must live permanently with that inferiority complex that nothing indigenous can ever be good enough, and that, in addition to technology, which we obviously lack, we must also copy mere administrative strategies from abroad, all in the pretended name of international best practice (IBP)? The second question is a simple request for a pointer by the protesters to a few of the countries practicing the so-called IBP. To diffuse this fairy tale of IBP, we will pick three examples: the oldest country with a modern oil industry administrative apparatus (USA), another country whose model is widely acclaimed to be the best (Norway) and a third country that has made the most wealth from its petroleum industry (Saudi Arabia). To us, this a good random sampling because it uses sound experimental parameters in the selection. In the US, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) and Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSSE) under the Department of Interior have been recently rejuvenated and empowered to routinely manage oil and gas environmental matters in addition to lease administration, petroleum geology, strategic planning, safety, etc. exactly as it is in the DPR, to ensure a full Sustainable Development balance as a one-stop shop. Please note that the two agencies are both resident in the same United States Ministry of Interior. As for Norway, the current PIGB that Nigeria is trying to implement was patterned essentially after the Norwegian Model, where the Ministry of Environment has absolutely no operational link to the oil industry; rather they concern themselves with climate-related matters and environmental policy. In Saudi Arabia, Saudi Aramco is a national oil company equivalent to the old NNPC with the added regulatory powers likeable to the erstwhile model that Nigeria used in the early 1980’s before the creation of the DPR. It is a one-stop shop for their petroleum industry with the full complements including HSE, geology, engineering, facilities, investments, lease administration, refining, product distribution, petrochemicals, etc and there are no so-called environmental stakeholders nosing around to tell the government that Saudi Aramco is a failure or doomed to fail because it “has so much on its plates”. That is the country that has taken the best advantage of petroleum globally by a far margin. One then wonders where our protesting stakeholders borrowed their magical international best practice from.

In the third point by our “concerned stakeholder”, they found the EGASPIN (the DPR enviro-lawbook) to be impeccable and unassailable, hence they found another tactical fault by saying there is no adequate machinery to implement it. Another ruse. The Norwegian authorities still wonder till date how the DPR was able to come up with such a wonderful and complete document. And to be candid, the DPR is implementing it to the best of its abilities, to the extent that the companies are under constant pressure. However, probably because the protesting stakeholders and their friends in the collaborating agencies did not hear the DPR slapping a fine of 5 billion dollars on Shell for the Bonga spill, they easily concluded that DPR’s implementation machinery is weak. If they bother to come around, we will give them a good and enduring lecture on how not to manage an industry on whims and public show. And, what’s more, the government has not complained about the DPR. As a matter of fact, the writing of the PIGB in its present format is a vote of confidence from both the executive and legislature that the DPR has performed up to the expectation of government over the years and therefore no need to deviate.

The last complaint of the amazing stakeholders’ workshop was a complaint about lack of transparency in the DPR and extreme difficulty in working with the Department. Once again, concerning transparency, the government has not complained, nor has any bona fide institution that needs to deal with or obtain information from the DPR. It may interest the members of the public that the DPR is so generous with research information that research students have a special fast-track arrangement not only to obtain information directly from the DPR, but also to receive approval letters to go obtain same from any of its licensed companies. For obvious reasons however, the DPR would not carelessly share special information that the government has directed it to sell for national revenue, nor information that can be easily abused for litigation purposes. The complaining stakeholders probably fall into the restricted categories in their failed attempt at obtaining information from the DPR. Otherwise, things are about to get even better. Not only has the DPR made more robust the Annual Statistical Bulletin on Oil and Gas in order to put information at the fingertips of all and sundry, additional portals are under construction on its website for easier access to commercial and non-commercial data with the appropriate protocols for free or paid download as the case may be. This is not just with the aim of helping the public have more access but also to free up more time for the handling staff of DPR and enable them do more of their demanding professional engagements.

With the foregoing, it may be safely concluded therefore that the DPR is a modern and competent grouping of professionals with rounded and complementary functions actively managing the dynamic and fast-paced oil and gas industry. In contrast however, the advocates of a functional castration of the DPR have no technical or logical justification and they do not mean well, however nicely they may attempt to cloak their real intentions. They only seek a desperate access to their piece of the proverbial national cake, which is the exact embodiment of the problem that Nigeria currently faces as a nation.

 

Related posts

Reps Cttee summons Finance, Petroleum Ministers, others over state of refineries

Our Reporter

Expert expects unchanged rates as CBN holds MPC

Our Reporter

Nation’s electricity grid collapses- TCN

Abisola THOMPSON 

UN rejects Trump’s death penalty plans after latest mass shootings

By Shile GIWA

Experts call for audit of MDAs’ budget

Our Reporter

Nigeria in foreign exchange crises –ABCON

Our Reporter