Secretary of AMAPOB, Patrick Odiegwu, said this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Sunday in Abuja. Odiegwu said that the Nigerian Oil and Gas Industry Content Act of 2010 prescribed local content requirements to promote the patronage of Nigerian products and services by IOCs while calling for its strict enforcement.
He, however, said that the IOCs had continued to import barite for their drilling operations, adding that they were flouting the 60% requirement to locally source the mineral from the country.
NAN reports that Barite, a mineral found in Nasarawa, Plateau, Taraba, Benue, Adamawa, Cross River, Gombe, and Ebonyi states, is primarily used as a weighting agent in drilling muds for oil and gas exploration.
