By CLARA NWACHUKWU
Part of Nigerian oil and gas industry’s problem is not just lack of capacity, but also rapid brain drain, as a result of increasing discovery of hydrocarbon resources in other African countries. This was part of the major challenges identified by the Department of Petroleum Resources, DPR, hindering its effective monitoring and policing of the industry.

The Director, DPR, Mr. Osten Olorunsola, who disclosed this to House of Representatives Committee on Downstream Petroleum, said other African countries were poaching their manpower from Nigeria.

He said, “20 years ago, it was just Nigeria, and probably Gabon that were producing oil, but today, there is rapid oil and gas discoveries being made by practically every African country, even those that we thought did not have these resources have all made their own finds. “

Angola and some others joined about 10 years ago, five years down the line, Ghana and the rest came on board, and it is Nigerians they are using as their technical experts because Nigeria being the oldest country with the industry experience is now experiencing brain drain  as other countries continue to pull out our experienced hands. And you can’t blame them for going because with fat salaries in dollars and long term contracts, Nigerians are leaving for these countries in droves.

In fact, in Angola, in one of the departments in their national oil company, are only Nigerians. So, we have facing serious problems keeping our experienced hands.”   Olorunsola also identified an aging workforce as another major setback for the petroleum industry regulator.

He decried that, “quite a number of our experienced people are going to retire very soon, and this is a big challenge. Even me, I will not be here for too long.”

As a result, he said the DPR has embarked on intensive training of the younger workforce that will take over the running of the agency, as well as fast tracking their industrial development to bridge the gap that will be created.

He said the DPR has about 1,081 staff, which keeps depleting on daily basis on account of the brain drain and aging work force, and as such, lacked the requisite skilled capacity to effectively police the industry.

, which boasts of 127 depots in the country, 62 jetties, 24,000 retail outlets, and 25,000 trucks to distribute petroleum products round the country. Technology for people In view of the dearth of capacity and constraints to employ new hands, Olorunsola said the DPR is also investing heavily in technology.

“Since we don’t have all the people we need and we cannot be everywhere at the same time, we have invested a lot in equipment so that from our offices we can monitor what is happening outside, where we don’t have our men.

That is why we made substantial provisions in the 2012 budget for manpower development and technology to make up for the shortfalls,” he explained. Other challenges The DPR boss cited other challenges weighing down on the operations of the regulator to include inadequate funding, dearth of facilities, bureaucratic bottlenecks and political interference and a host of many others.

With regard to, he argued that the agency is grossly under funded to meet the demands and challenges of the industry, saying, “Funding is a very serious issue; because government’s resources are limited, the department has not been sufficiently funded compared with its peers in countries like Brazil, Norway, and Malaysia and the rest. We are far behind them, and if we must up our games, then there is the need to fund the agency appropriately.”

Legislative oversightThe Chairman of the House Committee, Hon. Dakuku Peterside, who led the delegation, expressed the legislators’ dismay over the indiscriminate siting of petroleum assets such as depots, retail outlets and a host of others around residential.

He noted that these have serious and attendant health,  safety and environment issues associated with such unguarded operations, particularly in Lagos, where they visited a number of petroleum facilities including the Atlas Cove Jetty, and some petroleum depots in Ibafon, Apapa.

The lawmakers, therefore, urged the DPR to take a second look at issues such as the siting of fuel stations in residential areas; pipelines vandalism, which they referred to as operational terrorism; indiscriminate location of tank farms; products adulteration; the menace of unfit petroleum trucks, and a host of many others for which the committee had received a legion of complaints from Nigerians.

Visit to Lagos Peterside earlier explained that his committee was in Lagos, as part of its oversight functions over agencies, ministries, departments and parastatals, adding that this was the committee’s first visit outside Abuja. “We chose to visit Lagos first because Lagos holds about 40 percent of key petroleum assets in the country.

Also, in terms of consumption of these petroleum products, Lagos also tops the chart, and the industry regulator is also located in Lagos,” he added. Areas of concern Specifically, he said the legislators were not impressed with how the Federal Government was handling the Atlas Cove Jetty, Nigeria’s biggest petroleum products reception terminal.

He also said the committee was equally worried that the nations traditional refineries cannot still cope with domestic consumption needs. As a result, he said the committee needed to visit and interact with the industry regulator, to explain the reasons for these anomalies and find out what was doing to tackle them for the interest of the country and the people, going forward.