Niger­ian High Com­mis­sion­er Musa John Jen says Trinidad and To­ba­go should not pan­ic if gas re­serves are de­plet­ed as the African na­tion will wel­come us "with open arms." Jen made the state­ment last week as he, to­geth­er with a Niger­ian del­e­ga­tion and Sci­ence Tech­nol­o­gy and Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Fazal Karim, toured the Na­tion­al En­er­gy Skills Cen­tre head­quar­ters, Point Lisas, Cou­va. The high com­mis­sion­er, ad­dress­ing jour­nal­ists, said the re­la­tion­ship be­tween Nige­ria and T&T is grow­ing and there is a deep­en­ing of ties through ed­u­ca­tion and in­vest­ment. Last year T&T re­ceived 100 Niger­ian stu­dents at NESC for skills train­ing in oil and gas re­lat­ed ed­u­ca­tion­al pro­grammes and this coun­try is set to re­ceive 600 more. Jen en­cour­aged more busi­ness ties be­tween the two na­tions and as­sured Nige­ria is an al­ly. "Nige­ria has the five largest de­posit of nat­ur­al gas in the world, so you will do very good busi­ness in Nige­ria. So I do not see any pan­ic even if your gas re­sources de­plete we will be able to wel­come you with open arms to Nige­ria," he said.

The high com­mis­sion­er said there are many ar­eas of in­vest­ment for T&T in Nige­ria, in­clud­ing air trav­el.

He said, "We are al­so look­ing at the deep­en­ing of re­la­tion­ship in terms of trade and com­merce. We have been talk­ing about di­rect flight link­age from here to Nige­ria through the At­lantic." Nige­ria and T&T, he said, can to "good busi­ness" giv­en our lev­el of ex­per­tise. "You will be able to have in­di­vid­u­als, cor­po­rate or­gan­i­sa­tions who will be able to part­ner at ei­ther the lev­el of pri­vate, cor­po­rate bod­ies to Gov­ern­ment or cor­po­rate bod­ies to cor­po­rate bod­ies and you can be able to trans­fer these, not on­ly the skills but, the in­dus­tries," he said. Jen added that the Gov­ern­ment is in­ter­est­ed in cul­tur­al ex­changes be­tween the two coun­tries and he is hope­ful that Niger­ian movies will find favour in T&T. He al­so re­vealed that dur­ing Car­ni­val Niger­ian artistes will be per­form­ing at the So­ca com­pe­ti­tions. "They are not com­pet­ing, (they are com­ing to) per­form to add Niger­ian con­tent to the so­ca in this place," he said.

...world's largest gas-flar­ing na­tion

Gas util­i­sa­tion is a pri­ma­ry goal of Nige­ria's pe­tro­le­um and en­er­gy poli­cies. This is be­cause, with a proven re­serve of 260 tril­lion cu­bic feet of nat­ur­al gas, Nige­ria's gas re­serve is triple the na­tion's crude oil re­sources.

Nige­ria is re­put­ed to be the largest gas-flar­ing coun­try in the world. By not ful­ly har­ness­ing its gas re­sources, Nige­ria los­es an es­ti­mat­ed US$18.2 mil­lion dai­ly. On its part, the Niger­ian Min­istry of Pe­tro­le­um Re­sources, in ad­di­tion to im­pos­ing penal­ties which were in­tend­ed to end gas flar­ing by 1994, has of­fered in­cen­tives to po­ten­tial in­vestors who are in­ter­est­ed in gas ex­plo­ration.

Since the 1980s, there has been in­creas­ing util isa­tion of gas in Nige­ria, for pow­er gen­er­a­tion, in­dus­tri­al heat­ing, fer­tilis­er and petro­chem­i­cal man­u­fac­tur­ing and as feed­stock for di­rect steel re­duc­tion. But the largest gas users will be the liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas (LNG) project and the alu­mini­um smelt­ing in­dus­try. Nige­ria's LNG project had been on the draw­ing board since the 1960s.

Liq­ue­fied pe­tro­le­um gas is cur­rent­ly pro­duced from the four lo­cal re­finer­ies, the cur­rent to­tal re­fin­ery ca­pac­i­ty be­ing about 200,000 tonnes year­ly. Trans­porta­tion is, how­ev­er, a ma­jor hand­i­cap in LPG mar­ket­ing. As part of gas con­ver­sion, the Niger­ian Agip Oil Com­pa­ny has con­struct­ed two gas re­cy­cling plants at two oil fields. Oil com­pa­nies op­er­at­ing un­der the var­i­ous agree ments in­clude Shell, Exxon Mo­bil, Chevron, Elf, Nige­ria Agip, Tex­a­co Over­seas, Ex­press Pe­tro­le­um/Cono­co, Ad­dax, At­las, Am­ni In­ter­na­tion­al, Con­sol­i­dat­ed Oil, Pan-Ocean, Nige­ria Pe­tro­le­um De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny and Dubri Oil. (on­li­nenige­ria.com)

NESC to train 600Nige­ri­ans for en­er­gy sec­tor

T&T will soon wel­come some 600 Niger­ian stu­dents for en­er­gy sec­tor skills train­ing at the Na­tion­al En­er­gy Skills Cen­tre (NESC). The stu­dents are part of the ex­pan­sion of a skills train­ing part­ner­ship be­tween NESC, Qual­i­ty En­gi­neer­ing Sales and Ser­vice (QESS), a Niger­ian hu­man re­source and train­ing com­pa­ny and the Niger­ian High Com­mis­sion. The an­nounce­ment was made on Mon­day evening as Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Fazal Karim and mem­bers of the NESC board wel­comed Niger­ian High Com­mis­sion­er Musa John Jen, pres­i­den­tial spe­cial ad­vis­er Bles­son Oboroku­mo, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of QESS God­frey Og­bomon-Paul and oth­er of­fi­cials to NESC's head­quar­ters in Point Lisas.

Jen said the stu­dents, who in­clude women, would be trained in skills nec­es­sary for the en­er­gy sec­tor. Karim said 100 Niger­ian stu­dents were al­ready be­ing trained at NESC and he wel­comed the news that 600 more would be com­ing to train here. He said the min­istry was con­tem­plat­ing ex­pand­ing the pro­gramme to in­clude oth­er ar­eas of ed­u­ca­tion in­clud­ing mar­itime train­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies Ch­aguara­mas mar­itime cam­pus. The min­is­ter said the min­istry was al­so look­ing at pro­grammes in hos­pi­tal­i­ty and tourism for Niger­ian stu­dents. "We ex­pect not on­ly to deal with the train­ing for stu­dents, but the train­ing of train­ers," he added. Paul said ac­com­mo­da­tion and trans­porta­tion of the stu­dents was chal­leng­ing and ex­pen­sive. He said up to US$40,000 was spent per month on trans­porta­tion.