Featured, Oil & Gas
By Benprince Ezeh
SIMBI Wabote, executive secretary, Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board, NCDMB, has provided vivid details of what the coronavirus, COVID-19, has done to the oil and gas sector, while noting that the health sector was the worst hit by the pandemic.
Wabote stated this in an exclusive interview with Realnews last week while answering question on whether the oil and gas sector was the worst hit of all sectors of the economy by the coronavirus, COVID-19, pandemic.
Noting that the Covid-19 was with no ready, answer on treatment or prevention of the infection, he said: “The health system of most countries in the world were stretched beyond limits and the loss of lives across the globe was just saddening.
“Of course, the Oil and Gas Industry and other sectors like aviation, tourism, trade, and others were impacted. Sectors that are largely, or to some extent, reliant on technology such as the oil and gas sector were able to adapt swiftly to the challenges posed by the pandemic as most operations migrated to the virtual space.
However, he said that the demand side of oil and gas industry was severely impacted by the COVID-19 because sectors that demand its products were heavily also highly impacted, which resulted in the record low prices of crude oil at the peak of the pandemic.
When Realnews asked him to provide an estimate of what the pandemic has caused the sector, Wabote replied that it robbed the sector most of the new projects lined up for implementation.
“Several new projects worth billions of dollars were postponed, and we needed those projects to grow Local Content. This means in-country capacities and capabilities could not be utilized with the attendant job losses, inability to service loans, sectorial decline, and lack of new investments. The pandemic also brought greater focus on energy transition.
“It is remarkable, however, that in the Nigerian oil and gas industry, we had reasons to be happy because we signed the US$12bn dollars E&P Contract for NLNG Train 7 project at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and we sustained the operations of the oil industry during the period using local personnel and service companies.
“We are upbeat that some projects will soon commence now that COVID 19 vaccines are being rolled out,” Wabote said.
On how it impacted on the implementation of NCDMB’s strategic 10-year roadmap, the executive secretary said that some of its projects and programmes got differed because of COVID-19, adding that it affected everybody and everything world over and NCDMB was not insulated from the impact.
“For instance, some projects and programmes got differed because of COVID and you needed those projects to support the attainment of the 10-year roadmap.
“We were lucky because we had already implemented the roadmap for three years before the pandemic and we had made substantial progress on several the key initiatives.
“When we conducted a roadmap checkpoint review in Q4 last year, we found that we were on track by 62 percent on the short-term initiatives; we were also on track ahead of schedule by 67 percent for the midterm initiatives and on track ahead of schedule by 40 percent for the long-term initiatives.
“Even during the pandemic, we pressed on with some of our major projects that are key to the Roadmap. For examples, our Oil and Gas Parks at Emeyal 1 in Bayelsa State, and at Odukpani in Cross River State will be ready in Q4 2022,” he said.
According to him, the board also invested in some other strategic projects like modular refineries and gas projects. Some of these projects are key to achieving our 10-year roadmap.
“We’re able to keep the momentum because we activated our Crisis Management Team at the onset Covid-19 with myself as the Incident Commander. The Crisis Management Team met virtually every work day throughout the lockdown period and later, we started meeting two times every week.
“Our goal was to ensure staff welfare and business continuity. On staff welfare we tracked our staff wellbeing and encouraged compliance with all the NCDC protocols. Under our business continuity strategy, we rolled out measures to mitigate the impact of COVID on the industry stakeholders.
“First, we moved our approval processes online and ensured that there were no delays in the delivery of our commitments to the industry. Then we slashed the interest rates on the Nigerian Content Intervention Fund (NCI Fund) from 8% to 6%. We approved that all running loans with outstanding tenor within 3 years be extended by 6 months, while all running loan facilities with a tenor above 3 years will get extra 12 months tenor.
“We took these decisions to reduce the impact of COVID on the repayment of the loans by service companies,” Wabote said.
– Apr. 14, 2021 @ 19:33 GMT
Tags: What COVID-19 robbed the oil and gas sector - Wabote
