Isaac Ombe, Yenagoa
Sixty-six years after the discovery of oil in commercial quantity, the groundbreaking ceremony of the long expected Oloibiri Oil and Gas Museum project is to take off at the abandoned site where oil was first discovered in commercial quantity.
Executive Secretary of the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB), Engr. Simbi Wabote, has also highlighted the importance of the Oloibiri oil and gas museum project.
A statement from the Corporate Communications Department of the NCDMB, the groundbreaking which would be performed by President Mohammed Buhari who would be represented by Minister for State for Petroleum Resources, Chief Timipre Sylva, on Tuesday.
The President is even expected to also lay the foundation stone of the NCDMB Conference Hotel.
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The project, Oloibiri Museum and Research Center (OMRC), is in Ogbia Local Government of Bayelsa State, while the groundbreaking of the NCDMB Conference Hotel Project (CHP), a three-star hotel being developed by the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB), at Swali, is adjacent to the 17-storey Nigerian Content Tower in Yenagoa.
The Oloibiri Museum and Research Center will be erected at the location where commercial quantities of oil were first discovered in 1957 by Royal Dutch Shell.
The Museum and Research Center is being developed in collaboration between the Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF), Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB), Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria (SPDC) and the Bayelsa State Government (BYSG).
The Federal Executive Council (FEC) had, on February 8, awarded the contract for the Phase-1 Engineering, Procurement & Construction of the OMRC to Julius Berger.
Speaking ahead of the groundbreaking ceremony, Engr. Wabote, who serves as the chairman of the project’s Steering Committee, explained that the Museum and Research Center would correct a historical oversight that lasted for several decades during which time the people of Bayelsa State complained that they had nothing to show for being the birthplace of oil and gas production in Nigeria.
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According to Engr. Wabote, the project would place Nigeria among other oil-producing nations that established oil and gas museums to recognise and preserve the heritage and origin of their oil and gas production.
The importance of the facility, the executive secretary disclosed, it would include the provision of a suitable location where historic developments, data, equipment, and tools used in the Nigerian oil and gas industry will be stored for posterity and provision of a Research Center where research prototypes from the industry can be tested against the requirements of the industry.
The museum, he added, would equally encourage tourism and integration of oil and gas host communities into the development of the sector.
Highlighting more insight into the Conference Hotel Project, Engr. Wabote explained that it was designed to provide suitable accommodation for stakeholders and other personalities that visit Yenagoa for business or to participate in the several oil and gas events organised periodically at the Board’s 1000-seater ultra-modern Conference Centre.
According to him, the hotel would equally provide accommodation for researchers and other persons that would visit the Oloibiri Museum as well as boost the attraction of Yenagoa as a tourist destination.
Dignitaries expected at the epoch-making event would include chief executives of the sponsoring entities, bigwigs from the oil and gas industry and stakeholders of the Niger Delta region.