ON LOKPOBIRI’S OIL INDUSTRY FORUM

The stakeholders’ meetings should be meaningful and productive

Last Thursday, key players in the oil and gas industry gathered in Abuja to lay the groundwork for what would become a bi-monthly or quarterly meetings of stakeholders in the sector. While this may sound laudable on the surface, when viewed against the backdrop of such hordes of meetings the sector has witnessed in recent years without any appreciable change, many are wont to see the idea as another jamboree. Indeed, those who label the new Petroleum Industry Stakeholders Forum as another talk-shop may not be wrong, especially given that the sector already has several fora for interactions.

From global events like the Abu Dhabi International Petroleum Exhibition and Conference (ADIPEC), the largest oil and gas event in the Middle East to the CERAWeek, an annual conference in Houston, Texas which brings together industry leaders, policymakers, and experts to discuss energy issues and trend, Nigeria has been a consistent participant at these gatherings, sending large delegations every year. At home, aside from the regular almost daily and weekly meetings of stakeholders, there are also the Nigerian International Energy Summit (NIES), the Nigeria Annual International Conference and Exhibition (NAICE), the NOG Energy Week Conference & Exhibition, among many others. These conferences cost time, money and other resources to organise.

While we do not want to discourage the Minister of State, Petroleum Resources (Oil), Heineken Lokpobiri from his quarterly sessions, we hasten to say that it must go beyond the usual talk shop to be of any value. The penchant for meetings without the required follow-up is already a subject of global discourse with many deriding our country as a place where so much time is wasted on such meaningless enterprise. TotalEnergies’ global Chief Executive Officer, Patrick Pouyanne, said that much in May 2024 during the Africa CEO panel in Kigali, Rwanda, when he openly criticised Nigeria for talking too much and doing very little. “Nigeria loves to open topics without closing them. You love to debate,” Pouyanne said while speaking about the frustration of many companies with developments in our oil and gas sector. “When you have such permanent debates, it’s difficult for investors looking for long-term structure to know what direction to go.”

Although the Niger Delta remains the most prolific part of West Africa in terms of oil and gas reserves, Pouyanne pointed out that because of continuous debates, there has not been a single exploration in Nigeria for 12 years. “It’s important to have a debate and then settle it and put a framework on the table that investors can trust,” he advised. Understandably, he got some bashing from Nigerians, especially given the seemingly condescending manner with which he spoke. But beyond emotions or nationalistic sentiments, Pouyanne wasn’t altogether wrong. Besides, he was not the first to complain about the official disposition to meetings that have no meaningful end products.

If people like Pouyanne must be proved wrong, the proponents of the new initiative must ensure that set targets are followed up and that collective agreements are monitored for strict implementation. Thankfully, Lokpobiri appears to have set a clear direction or agenda for future meetings of the forum. The minister’s clarification that the forum will serve as an avenue to smoothen overlapping policies, functions and activities by entities and individuals in the sector gives hope that the group may have started well.

Otherwise, if the platform will not tackle Nigeria’s inability to significantly raise crude oil production, cut the cost of producing a barrel of crude oil, come up with strategies to minimise oil theft and vandalism of oil assets, and remove the bottlenecks to investment in Nigeria, then it would have failed even before it started.