…Orders fingerprinting of crude oil to end pipeline vandalism
The Federal Government has concluded arrangements to establish an oil
and gas institute in Bayelsa State as part of ongoing negotiations to
tackle developmental problems in the Niger Delta region.
President Muhammadu Buhari administration has been rolling out
palliatives and infrastructural packages to develop human capacity and
quell agitation in the region.
The Minister of Science and Technology, Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu, made the
disclosure, yesterday, when he visited Yenagoa, the state capital, for
some official engagements.
While paying a courtesy visit to the state Governor, Mr. Seriake
Dickson, the minister said the institute would be sited in Odi, a
community in Kolokuma-Opokuma Local Government Area, that suffered
military invasion under former President Olusegun Obasanjo.
Onu, who was received by the Deputy Governor, Rear Admiral John Jonah
(retd) said the institute, when established would improve manpower in
the Niger Delta and reduce unemployment in the country.
He said siting of the institute in Bayelsa was strategic because of
the contributions of the state to oil and gas sector in the country.
The minister said the institute would enhance development of skills
among the people of the region to stimulate the local economy and create
activities in the oil-producing communities.
He said: “The institute will not only create jobs and improve skills,
but it will also create wealth. We need to develop capacity in oil and
gas processes in the country”.
The minister, who was also in Odi, to inaugurate the ultramodern
Bioresources Laboratory complex and the livestock feed milling complex
at the Bioresources Development Center (BIODEC),said the government was
deploying technology to monitor pipelines and track the country’s oil.
He said the laboratory would be deployed to investigate pipeline breaches following its capacity to embed fingerprints in oil.
He said with the facility oil theft would soon be a thing of the
past, as the fingerprinting would enable the country to track its crude
oil anywhere when stolen and solve the problem of economic sabotage.
Onu said the fingerprinting of the country’s crude oil would begin at
the end of the year insisting that the technology could be deployed in
the country.
He said the country under the current administration had come of age
and capable of solving her problems instead of depending on outsiders.
He said: “This lab, the ultramodern laboratory, I feel very happy;
for me, Nigeria is changing. With this capacity here now, we will be
able to do many things.
“I just gave them an instruction that by the end of the year, we
should have fingerprinting of our crude oil, so that if anybody steals
it we will be able to identify it, because even crude oil can have
fingerprints and with the equipment we have here we can do it in
Nigeria.
“One problem that we have is that we rely on outside, from other
people to solve our problems. We produce crude oil, we export it, but we
now import refined petroleum products.
“We exports our woods and we bring in toothpicks. We don’t want that
anymore and for you to do all this things we rely on others, we have to
look inward and we need to build capacity and what this facility is
doing for us.
I just mentioned to you now that you can do genome mapping of our
rare crops, plants, animals that are unique to us. We can even have
fingerprints of our own crude oil.
“Normally, this is something we spent a lot of money and you ask
other people to do it. Now, when we do it here, it is our person that
will do it here, that is how to create jobs, that is how to create
wealth because that money you could have sown outside will now be here
and be use it here. Even though we are the largest economic in Nigeria,
we want to bigger than that that.
“We also need to fight poverty, if you create jobs, you will fight
poverty, if you train people, you fight poverty and that’s what they are
doing here and I think we are ready to fight poverty.”
Also speaking, the Director-General of the Institute, Josiah Habu,
said the target of the research center was to bring reliability,
quality, originality, innovation and novelty to research and
development.
He said the inauguration of the facilities had officially opened the
gateway to a higher level of bioresources prospecting and processing to
new products and services.
Habu said: “For a start, the quest for the DNA of Nigeria crude oil
will soon be answered, to enable tracking of Nigeria crude oil flow
globally, hence solve national problem of economic sabotage.”
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