By Omoh Gabriel with agency reports
LAGOS—ROYAL Dutch Shell said that it had been forced to shut down an oil flow station in the Niger Delta due to a protest by a group of local women over a lack of development in their community.

The Anglo-Dutch giant said it shut down the Otumara-Escravos flow-station in Delta State because of the demonstration but was in talks with the local community and the state government to try to end the stand-off. It did not say whether production was affected.

Shell spokesman, Tony Okonedo, said: “Dialogue with the women, their community and representatives of the Delta State government continues with a view to resolving the issue.”

Such protests are not uncommon in remote communities in the Niger Delta, given the fact that a vast network of mangrove creeks remain impoverished despite five decades of oil extraction, which have left their land and water polluted.

Royalty payments from oil firms and the sharing of federal oil revenues had resulted in state governments in the Niger Delta having larger budgets than many West African nations, but endemic corruption has meant that little development has been achieved.

Nigeria is committed to boosting the role of indigenous firms in its oil industry so as to derive greater benefit from anticipated investment of $150 billion in the sector over the next five years, a senior official said.
President Goodluck Jonathan, last April, signed into law a local content bill aimed at boosting the involvement of local firms in its mainstay industry and creating jobs in Nigeria, most of whose 140 million citizens have seen little tangible benefit from crude oil in the five decades since it was first pumped.

Executive Secretary of the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board, NCDMB, an organization set up to oversee the implementation of the bill, Mr. Ernest Nwapa, said that less than 20 percent of an average annual industry spend of $18 billion was retained in the OPEC member nation, a situation which had to change.

Nwapa said: “For decades, operators and planners have focused squarely on foreign sourcing of equipment, facilities and materials,” adding that the unfortunate result was that after executing thousands of major projects worth trillions of dollars, there was hardly any capacity developed within the country to manufacture equipment for new projects or support or existing facilities.

He said Nigeria was looking to the example of Brazil, which had developed a world-class oil industry while focusing on local content, lifting local participation from $35 billion from 2003-2007 to a projected $190 billion for 2009-2013.

Nigeria’s local content bill gives domestic firms priority in the award of oil blocks and requires foreign partners such as Royal Dutch Shell, ExxonMobil and Chevron, to hire more local staff.

It also lists in minute detail the number of materials and services that must be sourced in Nigeria, for instance, 65 percent of divers in energy projects must be Nigerians and 60 percent of steel ropes made by local firms.

Nwapa said the country hopes that wider legislation to overhaul the industry, in the form of the Petroleum Industry Bill, PIB, currently before parliament, will spur a new wave of investment and further promote indigenous involvement in the industry.

He added that anticipated investment of $150 billion in Nigerian oil and gas over the next five years would include drilling rigs, vessels, Liquefied Natural Gas, LNG, plants, refineries, pumps, valves and pipeline systems and that local firms needed to position themselves to meet these needs.

He said: “It is estimated that over 150 times more jobs are created in other countries than in Nigeria on the back of Nigerian projects, at the expense of national development.”