Nigeria’s oil and gas: Actionable plan for jobs

To reduce unemployment for our teeming unemployed graduates, an environment must be created by Government and private sectors to capitalize on the downstream products from our oil and gas industries.

I will suggest competitive employment generation between the 36 states. The Federation Accounts Allocation shared monthly between Federal, States and local governments, plus the additional 13 per cent of oil revenue, paid out as derivation fund, to oil-producing states, must be tied specifically, to verifiable number of jobs generated by each state.

Knowing that a goal without a plan will remain just a wish, the Federal Government, news media, and labour organizations, must monitor and publish monthly reports of the performance of each state.  Understanding the labour market and the process by which workers and jobs come together is critical to devising effective labour and monetary policies. This is a question of effective leadership.

Governments in developed countries succeed or fail, win or lose, on basis of  the state of the economy and number of jobs generated for its citizens.  It is time to hold our elected and appointed officials accountable to produce results instead of lobbying for big titles and making long vacuous rhetoric speeches.  This is time for action, and it is still a question of effective leadership.

Did you know that on this planet earth, nearly 90 percent of the world’s population is cut off from goods and services that the well-off 10 percent accept as normal? Put our global engineers, especially chemical engineers,  to work.  Let them design, fabricate, build  infrastructural framework, and provide services that will generate employment and investments.  Government, as a spender of last resort, must set example to reduce our chronic unemployment and provide a template to reduce the degree of public pain to the unemployed.

The government and individuals from industry, academia, and private sectors must provide, as important priority,  a pathway and job ideas as a vehicle to reduce unemployment by reducing barriers and facilitating opportunities to affordable access to resources that would foster the creation of small companies from start-ups.  Relevant resources might include information about how to start a company, management expertise, links to key services, and a list of potential mentors and sources of capital and fostering partnerships with large companies.  They should outline financial policies that could encourage large companies to partner with small ones to promote entrepreneurship.  Similarly, they could partner vigorously with academic institutions and other relevant organizations to promote awareness of career pathways and educational opportunities that involve entrepreneurship.

Let our media coverage increase public awareness of the value of creating employment for our unemployed youths and not celebrate mediocrity (showing off products we do not produce like cars, aeroplanes, ships, iron and steel, etc.).  Instead, let the media focus on the innovation, creativity and imagination of our engineers and scientists, which is the vital spark of all human change, improvement and progress.

The United Nations has designated 2011 as the International Year of Chemistry. Insight in the value of innovation in energy and petrochemicals was  enunciated by the President of ExxonMobil Chemical Company at the 2011 National Petrochemical & Refiners Association (NPRA) International Petrochemical Conference.  He amplified the fact that chemicals touch more than 95 percent of manufactured goods and virtually every sector of modern economy, from basic human needs such as food, water, clothing, housing and transportation all the way to the latest advances in health care, communications and information technology.  That is why at ExxonMobil 90 percent of their operated petrochemical capacity is integrated with refining or upstream gas processing. 

Now, the reason why I am focusing on ExxonMobil is because of their history.  Their chemical business dates back some 90 years when they developed the first commercial petrochemical, isopropyl alcohol, from refinery gases.

In the 1940s, they developed naphtha steam cracking, the very backbone of today’s petrochemical industry.  Why can’t we go into partnership with the IOC’s (International Oil Companies) on refineries and petrochemicals?  ExxonMobil has innovative partnership with Saudi Aramco, Sinopec and their provincial government to build China’s first fully integrated refining, chemical, and fuels marketing complex in Fujian Province, thereby creating a platform for advantaged growth.

Similar petrochemical complex is being built in Singapore and Shanghai.  Currently in Nigeria, we have PSC (Production Sharing Agreements) with IOCs.  So, why can’t we go into partnership with the IOCs downstream where we stand to gain to reduce our dependence on imported fuels?  Is this not a question of leadership?

Service industries will grow with establishment of  small and medium-scale petrochemical industries.  Services survive on a surplus of wealth-creating endeavors.  If there were no surpluses produced by our economic  engines, if everyone lived hand-to-mouth, producing only the bare essentials as in primitive agrarian societies, Services, as we understand them, would not exist.  Without technologically driven gains in human productivity generating a widening surplus, we are doomed to Hobbesian life: nasty, brutish, and short.

Lastly, money is important if you don’t have it. Nigeria has money (perceived, poorly managed by their custodians) and resources, and should utilize their Chemical Engineers to work on petrochemicals from coal, natural gas, and crude oil.  For example, from benzene, xylene, toluene, propylene, ethylene, methane, butanes, butylenes, butadienes and their derivatives, Nigeria could make  products ranging from plastics, agricultural chemicals to cosmetics and perfumes, etc. 
Only Nigerians can solve their self-inflicted problems by providing resources,  job skill sets of the future by making, producing, manufacturing goods and services for their citizens

GODWIN J. IGWE