Diamond Advocates Capacity Building in Nigerian oil and gas industry

To entrench a culture of sound corporate governance practices in the Nigerian oil and gas industry, there has to be a consistent investment in capacity building across board in companies operating in the sector.

Mr. Samuel Egube, Director, Corporate Banking, Diamond Bank Plc gave this advice at the recently concluded Nigerian Oil and Gas Conference (NOG 13) held in Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). Diamond Bank Plc, one of Nigeria’s leading commercial banks was the platinum sponsor of the conference.

Egube who presented a paper titled “Domestic & International Funding for Energy Projects in Nigeria (Current Realities/ Charting the Way Forward)” told the distinguished audience that there was need to invest in future growth through structured capitalisation of profit as well as the need to periodically create windows for additional investment through additional equity and other forms of capital investment into the business.

Left: Honourable Minister of Petroleum Resources, Diezani Allison-Madueke and Director, Corporate Banking, Diamond Bank, Samuel Egube at the Bank’s stand at the recently concluded Nigerian Oil and Gas Conference (NOG 13) held at the International Conference Centre, Abuja.

The banker also highlighted the need to constantly deepen the integrity of business processes through ISO Certification and by bench-marking them against other forms of international best practices.

He also stressed the need for investment in long-term technical and professional training, capacity building for operators in the industry and regulators, adding that the Nigerian Content Development Monitoring Board (NCMDB) could introduce mandatory capacity development programmes for top and medium level management of indigenous oil companies while IOCs and other production companies use these benchmarks for contract grading.

Egube also reiterated the need for insistence on ISO certification of internal processes as a pre- condition for specific contracts.

Diamond Bank has played a major investment role in the Nigerian oil and gas industry over the years. Some of its landmark energy transactions include Neconde Energy Limited $94 million reserve base lending for asset acquisition and field development, Caroil Drilling $110 million acquisition of three land and swamp rigs and the facilitation of the financing of field development for Orient Petroleum Limited and the construction of a new refinery to the value of $100 million. The bank was part of the consortium of banks that won the Project Finance Magazine's Deals of the Year Awards for the
financing of last year’s NNPC /ExxonMobil RDP.