Houston Tx – The Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF)is saddled with the responsibility of equipping Nigerians with the requisite technical skills needed to function in the oil and gas industry.

At a time when the Nigerian oil and gas industry is witnessing a sizeable amount of IOC divestments the role of this Agency has never been more essential.  The Executive Secretary Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF) Dr Oluwole Oluleye took out time to speak with select Journalists on the sidelines of the just concluded Offshore Technology Conference in Houston Texas, USA where he addressed these and other relevant issues. Dr. Oluleye also spoke on the commitment of PTDF to the implementation of President Goodluck Jonathan’s transformation agenda and achievements recorded in partnering other government agencies in securing gainful employment for PTDF trainees after being trained. Biztellers Joseph BAMIDELE who covered the OTC in Houston was on hand for this special interview.

Congratulations on your recent appointment. Can you give us an idea of the direction of your administration as the Executive Secretary?

Okay, thank you very much. I assumed office about a year ago and I appraised the situation on the ground with the spirit of patriotism. First of all, what we have done is to ensure that scholarships are done during the school year and not to be given intermittently at our whims and caprices. So, it is properly timed now from October to September of the next year. We’ve been involved in a lot of training, and what I did observed is that several of the people that we have trained are not in the industry. Part of the mission of the management of PTDF now is to ensure that a trained personnel that we  trained abroad, when they come back, we get them to do some practical training with PETAN, after the training, we want to ensure that they are fixed in the industry and in view of that, the honourable minister of petroleum resources is emphasising indigenous participation in the oil and gas, so rather than having a few multinationals, we have a lot of Nigerian companies that would be able to employ these Nigerians coming in, and that reduces the unemployment situation significantly. So, we want to be judged by the number of people we place in the industry as the years go by.

In your presentation, you alluded to critical areas where you think there is a dearth in supply of manpower expertise and so on, do you see this as a possible challenge affecting the employment of Nigerians by indigenous companies especially with the recent  divestments of IOC assets? And as a follow up to that question can you shed more light on your partnership with the NCDMB such that the people you have trained would be adequately engaged?

Again, we have identified the critical areas. There is a construction of Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) going on and there is a critical dearth of welders to undertake this project. As a result of identifying the skills gap, what we did about a month ago was to pick up some of our former trainees and do further advance training for them. We took about 550 of them to undertake this training in the next couple of months for them to be qualified. Once this process goes out, we are taking another 550 trainees. The gap that has been identified in terms of employment is about 8,000.  Hence we would be working over a period of time to fill this gap. The 8,000 would be on welding specifically.

We also need people in electrical, mechanical, rig operations and all that. I mentioned some of the people we have trained in these various areas but they are not enough. Having identified that, we are geared towards improving and increasing the number of people that would be trained in that area. Again, the indigenous companies coming up due to the policy of the federal government, we have to train these people so that Nigerian companies would have enough technical people to work with them rather than bringing expatriates from abroad. We want our engineers to be as qualified as any other engineers abroad and Nigerians can be far better than them.

Talking about collaboration with Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB), our mandate is specifically for skills development, building capacity, capabilities and competencies. We have stayed within this our mandate over a long period of time. We are working for the same government and we went to Yenagoa and initiated these co-operations so that if there are apparent overlaps, we would be able to sort out the gray areas and in fact, there shouldn’t really be overlaps. So, there is absolutely no problem for us working together.  I said that those that we trained, the NCDMB would assist us, since we do not have direct access to the International Oil Companies ( IOC’s). Those we trained as part of the collaboration would be sent to NCDMB Executive Secretary to place them in the right jobs in the industry.  That’s part of co-operation with NCDMB.

What kind of synergy do you have with the universities churning out young graduates annually, especially as most of these graduates are actually not fit for oil sector employment?

We have about 16 Universities with faculties like Petroleum, Chemical Engineering and anything related to oil and gas as well as the environment. What we have done is to improve their facilities, equip them with laboratory equipments, bring in simulators where necessary and all that. So, what we are trying to do is that those who graduate from the universities are actually well-trained. After finishing that, the other aspect is to send them to industries. And I mentioned that we have a 12-month programme for some of these whereby we pay them some little stipends, they do some theoretical work and go on to do practical work in the industry, thereafter they will now be placed in the industry.

You also talked about the new oil and gas University…

No. They have polytechnics and the polytechnics are for middle level manpower development. As for Bonny, Mr. President has directed that the polytechnic in Bonny must commence activities in this school year, which is by September. So, we are working assiduously to meet that presidential directive. For the Polytechnic at Ekowe the physical structures are already completed, what we are trying to do is to provide the equipment to get them function and we are in the process of doing that also. We expect in the next couple of months that Mr. President would be gracious to get it commissioned.

Can we have the idea of how much was spent as investment  in capacity building?

I cannot provide that answer because I may be giving wrong information but it’s quite enormous. Considering the size of Nigeria, having skilled manpower is very necessary for the country. The manpower would not only exist for the country. Oil is being discovered in several African countries, so we can export these people to these various countries, and whether you like it or not they will send some money back home.

Sir, with this, what’s your projection of when Nigeria can be sufficient in terms of manpower based on ongoing activities?

Training is a continuous thing because people come in and also leave the industry, so it would go on. If you talk about domestication of training, then we can give about ten to twelve years life span for it. As we train more people, as we equip more Universities and Polytechnics, then we are really bringing into the country what exists outside and that can further improve as time goes on. Once we bring knowledgeable people who are highly skilled then they will train others. So, we have plans for domiciling a lot of the training in-country.

There has been significant rise in pipeline vandalism and crude oil theft, acts that require technical skills. After the internship, what’s the hope for someone who has been trained abroad to secure gainful employment in the industry so that we can reduce the above mentioned acts?

Again, this requires co-operation. I talked about what we do with the NDCMB, we do our parts of the training for them to have all the technical skills required to work effectively in the industry. NDCMB has direct relationship with the industry as a matter of fact and part of their duties is also to ensure that the IOC’s and other companies employ Nigerians. This is because for you to get some of the contracts you need to employ skilled Nigerians. Our interest is to provide NDCMB with a pool of highly skilled Nigerians for them to fit into the industry.

Some Nigerians go outside to train themselves, they express fears what the situation will look like when they return, do you have any plan of assisting any of these graduates who have gone out on their own?

As a student coming back, you must know the area you are interested in. You must know the several organizations that could assist, do they know about NDCMB or PTDF?  If you approach some of these organisations, they would be able to help or give the right direction. Again, there will be job opportunities as a follow up to the federal government’s policy on indigenous participation in exploration and production. PETAN talked about increasing membership from 8 members to 60, that’s very significant, and I also believe that more Nigerians would set up more companies. That link that did not exist between the oil industry and the Nigerian economy in terms of employment of Nigerians would come to fruition.

We have local scholarships scheme for undergraduates, for Masters and for Doctoral degrees in the Nigerian Universities. Again, these are the Universities that we are upgrading. That is where we are concentrating on, the more money we have, the more we are going to expand that. But for now, we are just concentrating on about 16 Universities to bring them up to international standard within the respective oil and gas department.

Away from just upgrade of facilities, are there plans to collaborate with these Universities such that essential technical courses can be inculcated in their curriculum from their fresh year in school in order for them to be fully familiar with the essentials of the sector they been groomed  for?   

We have local scholarships schemes for undergraduates, for Masters and for Doctoral degrees  in the Nigerian Universities. Again, these are the Universities that we are upgrading. That is where we are concentrating our efforts and money on, the more money we have the more we are going to expand that. But for now, we are just concentrating on about 16 Universities to bring them up to international standard within the respective oil and gas departments.

The Presidential Amnesty Office has been training ex-militants both within and outside the Country. Some of these trainees are now Pilots, while others have acquired various technical skills is there any collaboration with the Amnesty office to help absorb these ones?

Yes, the PTDF was part of the committee that was set up by the president on amnesty.  We are also training a group of about twenty pilots in South Africa as part of the amnesty scheme, and we intend providing those jobs. We don’t want to train people and not provide them jobs.  I know where to go and the contacts are already being made within the forces, public and private sectors. Let me just put it like this,  we will provide them jobs and a lot of them would graduate, at least 90 per cent of them would graduate by July this year. So, we are already making preparation to get them fixed up.

We are doing that, may be that is not really coming to the fore. For the lecturer within the country, we have software on seismic studies distributed to a lot of these universities for the training of the students. First the lecturers are trained on it then the students. They already have learnt the necessary things to do when they get on the field.

We also have co-operation with the Newscastle University in France that also train our lecturers on modern research methods and so on not just concentrating on the students, so we are taking it in totality. So, the lecturers are not left out in anyway. They are also being upgraded.

Sir, speaking specifically at what time would you think your establishment would say we are achieving, we have achieved and we have made meaningful contributions in umbers significantly especially for the industry you represent.

Honestly to answer that question, it would be a feedback from the industry and the people we have trained. Like I said earlier, the industry is expanding and it is going to be a continuous process so we cannot at a point say this is it. So, people are coming in and people are going out but most importantly the feedback is the most important to us whether those we have trained are meeting up to expectations of the industry. The monitoring and evaluation units have been empowered to do the monitoring of all our activities as an internal feedback for us within the system. From the other companies we expect feedback also from them. As part of the training for some of the youths we have had, we trained a couple of people in Cotonou on vocational skills. What we are trying to do is not just training and throwing them out at middle level manpower. We are working on a programme with  Heritage bank whereby some of these people after being interviewed, are loaned money from the bank to start some of the businesses they have been trained in, we are not just training and letting them go. We are trying to empower them with the hope that the single person we have trained will be able to take in two or more people. That way we will be reducing, in our own way, some of the unemployment problems.

What message do you have for the International community?

The message is that we would continue to do business with international partners. We also want something in return for all the activities in the past few years and maybe we gave away too much because you see the transformation programme now is emphasizing things that were not emphasized in the past. We need that assistance, we are talking and we will continue to talk with them and Nigeria is still very much open to business.