Stakeholders in the oil and gas sector have called on government to encourage more tertiary institutions and corporate bodies to go off the National Power Grid (PHCN) by investing in Compressed Natural Gas (CNG), LPG or renewable energies since this energy usage is cleaner, cheaper and environmentally friendly.
The stakeholders made the call in a communique at the third biennial international conference on hydrocarbon science and technology in Abuja.
Reading from a communiqué from a two-day programme organised by the Petroleum Training Institute (PTI) in Abuja, the Director of Research and Development, PTI, Dr Tina Isichei, stressed that the government should also seek to liberalise the sector.
The conference further recommended that “Due to the strategic uniqueness of PTI in the oil and gas industry and the need to deepen local capacity, NNPC Ltd, regulators and major oil companies should partner with PTI in human capacity development in the oil and gas value chain and infrastructural upliftment to enhance its service delivery.
“Also, the government should encourage more investors to participate and invest in Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) and Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) technology to utilize gas and distribute it to satisfy the domestic growing energy needs of various off-takers that are far off the pipelines.”
It also called for further domestication of oil and gas technologies which is the most promising approach to revamping the industry, and urged the federal government to promote in-country domestication of natural gas development for economic transformation.
Emphasising the need to deploy artificial intelligence in the sector, it noted that “Data mining, Blockchain, AI and Internet of Things (IoT) are gaining interest by Exploration and Production (E&P) companies, agricultural sectors, refineries and petrochemical companies which is why more investment needs to be carried out on their effective utilizations in-country.”
The Dr Henry Adimula-led institution noted that the conference resolved that Nigeria should ensure the domiciling of the proposed African Energy Bank (AEB) in-country to easily facilitate oil and gas energy projects financing.
The participants noted that for Nigeria to be among 50 developed nations by the year 2050, it has to believe in itself and make vigorous efforts to support R&D for the purpose of domesticating many technologies.
“Nigeria must expand sources of funding R&D to PTI and other academic institutions through incentives like tax credit etc. Research should be coordinated so that outputs can be market-driven,” the participants stressed.
