Executive Secretary of the Nigerian Content Development and Management Board (NCDMB), Mr. Simbi Wabote has stated given Nigeria’s 10-year Strategic Roadmap to achieve 70% local content in the oil and gas sector by the year 2027, there is great opportunity abound to maximize potentials in the midstream and downstream sectors in critical areas.
Wabote who spoke yesterday at the 2-day summit on ‘Nigerian Content Midstream/Downstream Oil & Gas, organized by the NCDMB, explained that the employment factor in the midstream and downstream sectors of the industry are higher in number and of a longer duration when compared to that of the upstream sector.
“This provides means to absorb outputs of our human capacity development programs in the form of job opportunities. The entry barrier for businesses to partake in the midstream and downstream sectors of the industry is relatively lower compared to that of the upstream sector,” he informed.
According to him, there are vast business opportunities in the midstream to downstream sectors ranging from processing, transportation, storage, and distribution that could be started on small scale and later scaled up to bigger enterprises thereby growing in-country capacities and capabilities.
Wabote informed that the profit margin increases towards the maximum in the downstream sector especially in the LPG value chain where the profit margin is highest at the distribution end of the value chain.
He posited that this serves as incentive to attract wider number of players into the downstream business thus spreading prosperity across board instead of spreading poverty.
He reminded the stakeholders that recent events in Europe have further buttressed the fact that every nation must develop and implement a strategic policy to ensure its energy security policy.
While defining energy security as the uninterrupted availability of energy sources at an affordable price, Wabote insisted that energy sources must be in ready-to-use form for the populace which means values from the midstream and downstream sectors must have been added thereby making the sectors very important pieces in the energy security narrative.
He highlighted that NCMBD’s development goal goes beyond the oil and gas but has linkage to other sector of the economy covering construction, ICT, agriculture, research and development, education, and others.
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