In the News:
ENERGY: NIGERIAN OIL AND GAS REPORT
NDDC gets Niger Delta coastal road design
The engineering design of the proposed 700-kilometre East-West Coastal Road has now been submitted to the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC). The multi-billion naira dual-carriageway forms one of the critical components of the much-talked- about Niger Delta Master Plan and would make accessible the formerly intractable swamps, mangroves, creeks and major rivers of the Niger Delta.
The alignment starts from Calabar, running across the Calabar River and Western channel, through Ibeno, Opobo, Andoni, Bonny, Brass, Ke, Kula, Brass, Oporoza, Mandagho, Awoye, Odonla, Aiyetoro and takes its stretch to Aiyeteju in Lagos. This alignment crosses almost 60 water bodies that would require bridges.
The Guardian gathered that the survey and the preparation of the final engineering designs have commenced. It is expected that the project would keep alive hope for over 1500 settlements in the Niger Delta, which are currently inaccessible by road.
As part of the overall development strategy for the region, the Federal Government had in 2007 rolled out the Niger Delta Regional Development Master Plan as the blueprint to address the gross underdevelopment of the area.
The East-West Coastal road is a key recommendation in the Master Plan produced by the NDDC. The proposed road would immensely increase economic activities in the coastal area, open up inaccessible communities and create tourism opportunities.
NDDC had in October 2008 commissioned a leading indigenous consortium of civil and structural engineers, Pearl Consultants, to undertake the studies and design of the proposed highway.
To ensure that all parts of the region are adequately connected to this East-West spine, rib-like roads have been introduced to connect the spine to major proposed and existing roads in the Niger Delta. Major connecting ribs are at Igbokoda, Mandagho, Ofunama, Unity road and several other roads.
Sustainable engineering design, a source in the commission said, was put to work to ensure that the balance of the Niger Delta ecosystem was not significantly impacted. The source added that all ecologically sensitive regions were by-passed to ensure the conservation of key species.
Major challenges encountered in the preparation of the road engineering, it was said, were geomorphological, geological and hydrological in nature.
Greater P’Harcourt City Mapping Begins
The completion of geographic image mapping of Rivers State to enable engineering design of the utility provisions in the Greater Port Harcourt City being planned by the River State Government has been started by Messrs Ferner Kundung GMBN, a German firm. The project began during the administration of Dr Peter Odili but did not cover all parts of the state.
Inspecting the “Ortho-Photo mapping aircraft” in Port Harcourt in early January, officials of the Greater Port Harcourt City Development Authority explained that weather situations would determine how soon the project would be completed.
One of the officials, Dr. Sylva Opusunju, said that full survey information and data was necessary to finetune location of facilities in the city. According to him, “without the proper data, it will be difficult to site the sewage and power water facilities without making mistakes. Sometimes, unless there is total mapping, the coordinates might even fall outside the state, so we had to ensure that the total imaging and mapping of the state was completed before engineering designs can be done”, he said.
The Development Authority, in a statement about developing the new city welcomed developers to partner with them in building more than 30,000 housing units which are projected for the city’s first phase.
Dame Cookey-Gam, chair person of the Development Authority, promised that the state government would patronize developers who build houses in the new city. The Authority also plans to aid developers through facilitating mortgage and financing arrangements with some banks though details on this were not released.
Already roads and other facilities are being constructed in the new city.
Post-Amnesty: Isoko Community Demands Inclusion
The Isoko Development Union (IDU), the umbrella union for the Isoko Ethnic Nation, has said that the permanent peace being sought in the Niger Delta region may not be realised unless the Isoko people were included in the post-amnesty project.
In a communiqué issued at the end of a meeting of the national executive of the union with traditional rulers, leaders and stakeholders of the Isoko Nation at Oleh, headquarters of Isoko South Local Government of Delta State, the IDU expressed fear that “a peaceful Isoko was not being carried along”.
The communiqué was signed by IDU Secretary-General, Hon. Nicholas Areh. He called for support for President Yar’Adua’s amnesty programme and noted that the majority of Isoko youths were becoming agitated as a result of their being left out of the post-amnesty programme.
The Union in the communiqué also mentioned several pockets of conflicts within Isoko Ethnic Nationality including Oleh, Iri, Oyede and Aviara in recent times and agreed that it was “a fall-out of the marginalisation of the Isokos before, during and after the amnesty exercise by the authorities”, and demanded that government should take necessary action to redress the situation.
Consequently, the IDU wants the federal government to direct the Post-Amnesty Implemen-tation Committee to appoint two grassroots-based Isokos into the various sub-committees established to implement the post-amnesty programme to enable Isokos feel belonged and to forestall imminent crisis.
FG disburses N300bn subsidy to oil marketers
The Federal Government has disbursed over N300 billion subsidy to oil marketers in the country between August 2009 and January this year according to the Executive Secretary of the Petroleum Product Pricing Regulating Agency (PPPRA), Abiodun Ibikunle.
He disclosed this yesterday during a tour of oil facilities belonging to Folawiyo Energy Limited, MRS energy and Capital Oil and Gas in Lagos.
Mr Ibikunle also said the agency had an outstanding N27 billion to disburse to marketers.
But speaking during an inspection of the facilities of NIPCO Plc at Apapa in Lagos, Senator Ahmadu Alli, chairman of PPPRA, stated that in view of the intermittent fuel scarcity the government had failed in its bid to stem problems in supplying fuel to the citizenry. He insisted that private refineries was the only way forward, stressing that the federal government must partner with private companies to build refineries in Nigeria, especially now with the on-going reforms in the oil industry.
“We all know that the government has failed;… (unless) we get up and refine our products by ourselves we will never be out of this problem”, he said.
The managing director of NIPCO who was represented by Mr Tunji Adeniji, told Alli that NIPCo was planning to build a refinery in Nigeria with capacity to refine 100, 000 barrels of oil per day.
