LOCAL CONTENT
Project 100:
How we made it
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fter successfully hosting the 2019 Nigerian International Petroleum Summit (NIPS), the Minister of State, Petroleum Resources, Dr Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu, on January 31 launched Project 100. Designed to provide institutional and financial support to 100 Indigenous oil and gas service companies, the project targets indigenous companies offering seismic, marine, engineering and drilling services to provide financial and non-financial as well as technical support and access to the market for the beneficiary companies. At the launch of what has been described by industry players as a laudable initiative, the first set of the Project 100 beneficiaries – 60 oil service companies who were successfully selected got showcased at the event that held at the Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF) headquarters in Abuja. In this report, Peace Obi chronicles few reactions from the Project 100 beneficiaries who spoke to OER at the project launch in Abuja. These beneficiary companies who expressed profound gratitude and amazement at the level of transparency the coordinators adopted in the process, called on stakeholders to take advantage of the initiative to improve their businesses.
No Intervention Whatsoever
For the only female-led establishment, that made the list, Zigma Nig Ltd, Mrs Funmi Ogbue, the excitement was contagious. She said, “I feel privileged. If you were present when the list was read, you would have heard that they had about 8000 companies in their database with 2,500 being active out of which 1221 companies were initially evaluated and then they selected only 60. “The honest truth is that we had no intervention. Initially, I thought it was a scam because I know some people in
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NCDMB and no one mentioned anything to me. It was truly out of the blues. Continuing, Mrs Ogbue, added that “They told us of the evaluation steps and gave us a checklist of the documentation we needed to provide. However, we didn’t
ORIENT ENERGY REVIEW Vol.9 No. 02
get any feedback. Next thing we got was a letter saying we have been selected. I felt very proud of all the hard work. This is a good initiative and platform. And if the government sees through this project, it would go a long way to encourage women’s
