Minister of State for Petroleum Resources Chief Timipre Sylva said the COVID -19 pandemic that rocked the global community is having a positive impact on Nigeria‘s oil and gas sector .
The minister, who made it known at the Nigeria News Agency (NAN) forum in Abuja on Sunday, said COVID-19 had prompted Nigerians to take over the leadership of the oil industry and gas.
“As a country, the problem during the lockdown was that most of our oil and gas workers are expatriates; most of them have returned to their countries due to the lockdown linked to COVID-19.
“They have to rush to confine themselves to their countries and when that happened it meant that we lost a lot of expatriate staff.
“But the good thing about COVID-19 for us is that our Nigerians were able to put themselves in their shoes.
“And now we have discovered in the oil industry that Nigerians can run our industry and we have also realized that it is better to encourage Nigerians to participate because we don’t know what will happen tomorrow.
“If another COVID-19 strikes again, how are we going to survive? So we have deliberately encouraged the participation of Nigerians in the industry, when disaster strikes, we know Nigerians will be there to lead our industry, ” he said.
The minister noted that although COVID-19 has hit other sectors of the economy, the oil and gas sector has been hit the hardest as the global price of oil collapses drastically.
“You know one of the first things that happened with COVID-19 was blockages and during blockages most people weren’t going out, planes weren’t flying, cars weren’t rolling and you know that is where our own business gets our market.
“If planes don’t fly, if cars don’t run, demand for crude oil collapses. So you can imagine that we really suffered. This is why the prices of crude oil have collapsed.
“Refineries weren’t even dumping their refined product because nobody was buying and driving their cars.
“So the refineries closed and no one was buying crude oil; this is the effect COVID-19 has had on our industry, ”he said.
The minister, however, assured that the sector would continue to promote ideas that would stimulate local content to enable Nigerians to participate effectively in the growth and development of the sector. (NAN)
