Nigerian Ports Authority, (NPA) is to commence monitoring of offshore operations to ensure compliance in all operations, Port Manger of Onne port, Munir Umar, has said.
Umar who disclosed this at the ongoing Offshore Technology Conference, OTC, said that the authority has commenced training of its personnel in preparedness of approval by the central management.
According to him, “Currently the investment in NPA should go offshore because that is where the money is. NPA will be monitoring policy but we have to train our people and that is what we are doing now.
“We train our officers on how to monitor offshore operations, as I say earlier that is where the money is.”
On why NPA is only going offshore after all these years, he pointed out that “you know we have a new management which is focused on this investment.
“I didn’t say the previous management did not do anything but they did not do enough. But the new management under Alhaji Habib, is focused on this issue and we are bent on it, we are investing on it and we are training people on it.”
Although the port manager said he could not say the exact number of personnel so far trained he stressed that the management is working closely with the oil companies for in house training and some others are sent aboard.
“Coming here is part of the training. We sent some to Dubai, to the United Kingdom, Shetland Island and others.”
Responding to accusations by operators that NPA seems to be favouring Intels when it comes to where oil and gas equipment can discharged and cleared, the port manager said the accusation is not true.
In his words, “No, it is not so. I believe we are fair. When we were going through the concession process, they (the other companies) did not even apply for it. It is now that they realised how lucrative it is, with the returns on investment that they are looking in that direction.”
Umar said that the port handled 250,000 (Twenty Equivalent Unit), TEU last year. Averagely we handle about 300 containers daily but at the moment the Customs have a new system called Pre-Arrival Assessment Report, PAAR before they were using the Risk Assessment Report, RAR which is a little bit slow.
“This has affected our cargo which means the space we are using is sort of limited but our average delivery is 300 daily and out total delivery per year is 250,000 TEU.”
He however explained that he is not in a good position to give the actual volume of wet cargo that pass through the area.
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