By Elizabeth ADENUGA
Stakeholders in Nigeria’s oil and gas sector have urged the federal government to adopt the co-location strategy to unlock huge potentials in the country’s gas sector.
The co-location initiative is an outcome of extensive Gas Based Industrialization (GBI) study conducted by Facility for Oil Sector Transformation (FOSTER), a non-profit organization given the gap, or absence, of critical and mature midstream infrastructure among others, to support the GBI.
Co-location concept is a practice which promotes optimization through one or more plants sharing mature pre-existing infrastructure, rather than building their own infrastructure, or waiting for a third party to do so.
At media training to sensitize the public on the initiative, experts in the oil and gas industry believed that the strategy could encourage and promote increased GBI investments by the private sector; create a vibrant value chain, provide employment and substantially increase government revenue and the potential for reducing host community conflict in Niger Delta.
According to Louis Brown Ogbeifun of the African Initiative For Transparency, Accountability And Responsible Leadership (AfriTAL), “since this is a new concept to the oil and gas space, it is crucial
for the media to understand the concept of colocation strategy for the implementation of Gas based industrialization projects in Nigeria.
“19 years after the Petroleum Industry Bill, which started its journey as the Oil And Gas Implementation Committee (OGIC) in April 2000, it is yet to be passed into law.
“In June and July 2017, the Federal Executive Council approved the National Gas Policy and the National Petroleum Policy (NPP) respectively. Laudable as theses were, they are yet to be progressed
to the realm of law.
“In 2018, the National Assembly also passed the PIGB into law.
Unfortunately, the Bill is yet to be signed into law. In addition, the fiscal, Host Community and the Administrative Bills are still within the confines of the National Assembly. As this administration winds
down, there is nothing in the horizon to show that these bills shall see the light of day.”
Ogbeifun, stated that in spite of the alluring reputation of Nigeria as the second largest producer of liquefied petroleum gas, LPG, in Africa, progressing her per capita usage of LPG has been stalled by failures traceable to systemic corruption, lack of political will to reviewing and implementing policies, rent-seeking, entrenching the culture of promoting conflict entrepreneurs, which leads to
non-bankability of oil and gas investments and projects; and painful abandonment of projects, neglectful under-development of the market
and the oil producing environments.
