Nigeria’s upstream petroleum and nuclear regulatory agencies have agreed to collaborate on radiological safety and streamlined oversight in the oil and gas industry, with the aim to reduce the overall cost of operations.
The partnership between the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) and the Nigerian Nuclear Regulatory Authority (NNRA), was sealed at a high-level meeting between the NUPRC’s Commission Chief Executive, Mrs. Oritsemeyiwa Eyesan, and NNRA’s Director-General/CEO, Dr. Yau Idris, recently at the NUPRC headquarters in Abuja.
The collaboration addresses a long-standing concern in Nigeria’s oil and gas sector -the multiplicity of regulatory frameworks that operators must navigate, each carrying its own fees and compliance requirements. Eyesan made clear that rationalising these overlapping rules was central to improving the country’s investment climate.
“The only way we can safeguard investments is to reduce our cost of operations and when you have multiplicity of laws, the likelihood is that you will have higher costs because each law normally will come with its own fee and charges,” she said.
Eyesan, according to a statement on Sunday by the NUPRC’s Head of Corporate Communications and Media, Eniola Akinkuotu, nominated senior officials from the Commission that would work closely with the NNRA on the task ahead. Saying: “We have identified critical areas on both sides, and we believe that as we collaborate, we can close existing gaps.”
Responding, the DG of the NNRA stated that given that the upstream petroleum sector is one of the largest users of radioactive sources and ionizing and radiation-emitting equipment in Nigeria – particularly for well logging, industrial radiography and nucleonic gauging – the NNRA relies on the cooperation of the NUPRC in order to fulfil its mandate.
“The goal is a single window approach, where both agencies share information rather than requiring operators to submit the same data twice,” he said.
Idris further stated that since oil and gas extraction often brings Naturally Occurring Radioactive Materials (NORM) to the surface, the NNRA seeks the assistance of the Commission to ensure that operators conduct radiological impact assessments as part of their broader Environmental Impact Assessments while NORM management protocols are incorporated into the NUPRC’s environmental guidelines for the upstream sector.
Both institutions are also expected to collaborate in training and knowledge sharing in the area of radiation protection and safe operations.
