PTI Announces 4th Biennial Conference on Hydrocarbons Science, Tech

•Says Africa must not hasten to abandon fossil fuels

Emmanuel Addeh in Abuja

The Petroleum Training Institute (PTI) yesterday announced the lineup of activities for its 4th Biennial International Conference on Hydrocarbon Science and Technology (ICHST 2025) scheduled to hold from October 22 to 23 at the PTDF Towers in Abuja.

In a press conference in Abuja,  Principal/Chief Executive of PTI, Dr Samuel Onoji, stated that captains of the oil and gas industry, policy makers, industry leaders, the academia and the general public are expected at the event.

The PTI has a mandate to provide courses of instruction, training, research in oil technology and to train technicians and technologists and such skilled personnel required for oil and gas production in Nigeria.

Themed: “Transforming Africa’s Hydrocarbon sector; Balancing Growth, Environment and Governance”, Onoji stated the conference aims to provide a holistic future of the oil and gas industry with a view to guiding critical stakeholders towards embracing opportunities, addressing challenges and fostering sustainable development in the ever-dynamic industry.

According to him, the conference will feature keynote addresses from both  ministers of state for petroleum resources (oil/gas), chief executive officers from sister agencies, panel sessions, exhibitions from partners and sponsors, as well as technical paper presentations.    

      He stated that the technical papers to be presented at the conference cover different areas of the hydrocarbon value chain from exploration to abandonment/decommissioning and new developments in environmental management, Artificial Intelligence/Robotics and carbon capture utilisation and storage, among others.

As the world grapples with energy transition utilisation of fossil fuels to cleaner and more environmentally friendly sources of energy, he stated that the PTI through the conference has taken a bold step to kick-start research and development effort that takes cognisance of the peculiarity of Africa’s hydrocarbon situation.

“With an estimated 125 billion barrels of crude oil reserves and over 600tcf of natural gas reserves in Africa, it is our considered opinion that Africa should not hasten to abandon fossil fuel but should strive to deepen research and development of local technologies that enable the exploitation and utilisation of our oil and gas endowment in a more environmentally friendly manner as the reality of global demand for fossil fuel is expected to linger for the next 50 years.

“Today, we are confronted with the stark reality that only a few African countries have been able to master certain aspects of oil production technology and fabricate key machinery for the industry. Thus, this conference intends to focus on research in these key areas with the aim of developing local content capacity in oil technology,” he added.

He stressed that the oil and gas sector in Nigeria and by extension Africa is experiencing unprecedented transformation in hydrocarbon resources, increased investments in exploration activities, declaration of 2021-2030 as decade of gas by the federal government, increased participation by the local players as well as regulatory reforms that align with the theme.