PETAN Targets 40% Local Vessel Ownership
Petroleum Technology Association of Nigeria has said it will step up efforts to increase indigenous vessel ownership from less than 10 per cent to over 40 per cent.
The Chairman, PETAN, Mr Bank-Anthony Okoroafor, said the association was also working to increase fabrication tonnage, iron processing, pipe-coating, pipe-laying, operation and maintenance, and engineering design, among others.
Okoroafor, while speaking at the association’s 2019 Clients’ Appreciation and Industry Achievement Awards in Lagos, said PETAN remained committed to ensure a sustainable environment for business and for the people.
He said, “PETAN remains committed to partnering all stakeholders to create an enabling environment for investment to thrive. PETAN was formed to utilise the technical know-how that abounds in the oil and gas industry by Nigerians as a springboard for economic change and technological advancement of our nation.
“This, we have been pursuing since 1990. It was in 2010 that PETAN developed a-4Cs strategic plan – capacity building, capitalisation, collaboration and consolidation – to identify and leverage capacity gaps from the Local Content Act, as well as consolidate and expand end-to-end capacities across the value chain.”
Okoroafor stated that the association would be 30 years in March 2020, adding, “I will be inviting the industry to celebrate with us in working with the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board and the National Assembly to increase retained earnings from five per cent to more than 27 per cent; to increase equipment ownership, drilling rigs, cementing, simulation and wellheads to more than 90 per cent.”
He said the theme of the programme, ‘Oilfield of the future: Operational excellence,’ was chosen to re-emphasise the long-standing PETAN philosophy for the growth of the industry.
The PETAN boss said, “That was why we initiated a PETAN’s Seal of Quality to sanitise our operations and certify our people in particular and the industry in general. The process has fully commenced and a number of our members have been certified in conjunction with Bureau Veritas.”
The Group Managing Director, Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, Mallam Mele Kyari, urged members of PETAN to focus more on gas development and support the government in curbing emission.
Kyari, who was represented by the Chief Operating Officer, Gas and Power, NNPC, Mr Yusuf Usman, said the use of gas for sustainable development had become paramount in policy formation in Africa.
