The Ministry of Mines and Steel Development has launched the Made-In-Nigeria barite in Port Harcourt, Rivers State which it said could cut down the over $300 million annual import bill.
Barite is a key industrial mineral whose overwhelming majority is used by the Petroleum Industry as a weighting material in the formulation of drilling mud.
In a keynote address at the launch yesterday, the Minister of Mines and Steel Development Architect Olamilekan Adegbite, said, “Indeed the launch of the roadmap was a game changer to the mining sector. As a result, we secured better funding from the government through improved budgetary allocation and intervention funds from the Natural Resources Development Fund (NRDF).
“A major component of the initiative is the promotion of local content in the production, quality assurance, and sale of barite.”
The minister said there are 50 locally produced bags of barite which are used in launching the Nigeria-made barite and that they meet the American Petroleum Institute (API) standard which is the global benchmark accepted by the petroleum industry.
According to him, the local product will create jobs, raise government revenues and save the scarce foreign exchange.
The Minister of State for Petroleum, Timipre Sylva, who officially launched the barite hinted that importation of the mineral into the country will be banned in 2022.
The Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Godwin Emefele, represented by a director, Anthony Ifechukwu, pledged to support the ministry, saying “The era of using our hard earned dollars on importation of barite is almost over.”
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