Its Group General Manager (Public Affairs), Dr. Levi Ajuonuma, gave this clarification amid rumours of in-fighting between the Ministry of Petroleum Resources and the NNPC over which regulator drives the local content project.

Ajuonuma said the policy was initiated by the Federal Government, which directed the NNPC to drive its implementation designed to ensure that the chunk of the funds the industry spends yearly was domiciled in Nigeria.

"NNPC, in its bid to concentrate on its core mandate, ceded the policy aspect of the local content project to the Ministry of Petroleum Resources, where it naturally belongs. There is no question of rivalry or boardroom politics over the matter. The ministry is still in charge of the policy while NNPC remains the chief driver of the project in the oil and gas industry."

Ajuonuma said contrary to reports that the local content division in the corporation had been rendered redundant by the alleged transfer of its functions to the ministry, "the division is still active with the full complement of senior management members of staff."

He maintained that the division was the being run in line with its mandate of domiciliation of materials and spend as well as increase the level of indigenous participation in the oil and gas operations, especially the upstream service sub-sector.

According to him, "the fact that the Group General Manager was retired does not mean that the division has been scrapped or about being whittled down. After all, there were other GGMs that were retired who have not yet been replaced by substantive GGMs."

Ajuonuma cited a number of milestones achieved in the local content project as driven by the NNPC as the increase of engineering man-hours performed in Nigeria from a dismal 250,000 in 2004 to over 3.5 million, rise in the fabrication tonnage from 12,000 in 2004 to over 100,000 as at the last count, the in-country fabrication of pressure vessels, deepwater buoys, platforms and manufacturing of line pipes executed in several locations across Nigeria.