Growth will depend largely on deepwater success, but crucial to this is also the effective exploitation of the vast gas resource. A restructuring of the industry to be more operationally efficient is needed, in order to attract foreign investments.
Government attitudes towards contracts and the time taken to approve field development programmes are also important factors. That this is a huge problem, which can mainly be laid at the feet of the Government and ruling classes, is not in dispute, but the oil industry needs to be prepared to accept some of the blame.
Assistance by oil companies to communities affected by the industry has been huge in monetary terms, running into billions of dollars, but it has proved difficult to channel it in the most valuable direction. Recent projects working closely at ground roots level with local people should show better returns. Industry efforts to improve the heavily polluted environment have increased in recent years, although continued attacks on pipelines do not help these endeavours.
Can the oil industry, as well as the international community, put pressure on Nigeria to bring some peace to the country, through fairer wealth distribution and an increase in social justice? Every effort must be made by all concerned, as the problems in the Niger Delta, through their effect on the price of oil, are assuming global dimensions.
The industry must play a major role in bringing stability to this troubled country. Filter Collections. Dollars flooded in The Bonga Field was the first deepwater field to come on production.
Rise in insurgency threatens security One of the major disincentives to exploration in Nigeria in recent years has been security. Huge untapped gas reserve Nigerian women from the lagoonal area west of Lagos. Pressure for peace Workers on a drilling rig south of Port Harcourt. A thirty year independence struggle with Ethiopia means that the natural resources of Eritrea remain largely untapped, but there is ample evidence that this now peaceful country is highly prospective for oil and gas.
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But the community was abandoned as soon as oil exploration stopped. For Edwin Ofonih, 73 -year-old retired tax revenue collector, Oloibiri when he was a child is not in any way different from the present.
According to him, there are no sweet memories as the residents of the community, who are majorly from the Ijaw ethnic group, still cannot boast of any development despite its historical significance in the country.
The septuagenarian who now spends most of his time working at his cassava and sugarcane farm, said the massive barrels of crude oil extracted from the community did not change the fortune of the residents for better as they continually engage themselves in petty fishing and farming, feeding and sustaining themselves with their little income.
His wrinkled face was clouded with a mournful expression as he pitifully bemoaned the sad fate of the community. His tone was sorrowful, yet effortlessly calm as he narrated how decades of neglect planted poverty and hardship on the residents. In its fertile days, Oloibiri began with an initial production of 5, barrels of oil per day and later shot its output to 2,,, placing the country as the 6th largest oil producer on the chart of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries OPEC.
The survey team came to Oloibiri for oil assessment in and they took the mud to their Shell office in Owerri for assessment. They later realised that there was a high quantity of oil in Oloibiri and the European company then came under Tailor Udu to install the pipes and drill the oil for people to see. We drank from the river and cooked from it.
There was no borehole. It was later that a military governor, Anthony Ukpo, helped the community with a borehole in and they channelled the water around the village. After it stopped working, Bayelsa State gave the community another one in The government later brought the office of taxation to collect tax from the people. Without taxation, there is no road and school; and back then, I worked in the ministry of finance in the revenue section.
No dispensary, no hospital. As you can see now, right from the time Shell came here and took that oil, nothing was done in Oloibiri, not even something that cost a kobo, apart from the standard school that was later built. Now, they are trying to build a hospital in the community. Letters that Oloibiri has written to the federal government are many.
If you put them in a whole house, it will spill over. Ofonih paused again to catch his breath. Bayelsa was carved out of Rivers in However, oil exploration in the community stopped in As things stand, Oloibiri is void of any industrial development. For the two nights spent by this reporter in the community, there was complete darkness in most of the streets and houses. Aside from the government school, which was founded on September 12, , a poorly executed maternity health centre by the state government has suffered decades of neglect in the community.
It was Thomas Egbas and Baniah Abori who bought the generators in the 70s. Residents had to purify their water with alum before they could drink or cook with it and we also depend on herbal concoction to fight our medical challenges. Oloibiri is not connected to the national electricity grid. Hence, people depend on big diesel-generators that feed the community of about 1, residents.
A generator plant was donated as far back as by Melford Okilo, then governor of River state. The community also received another power plant, a KVA generator, from a former chairman of the local government,. Just read on! Nigeria is one of the leading suppliers of oil to Western Europe and is the fifth largest supplier of crude oil to the United States. Nigerian oil supplies to the United States reached 1.
Where was oil first discovered in Nigeria? What place was the first to give oil to the country? Oil was discovered in in the Oloibiri community now located in Bayelsa state , but industrial development of the oil field began much later in
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