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I plan to attend the American Association of Petroleum Geologist/Nigerian Association of Petroleum Explorationist (AAPG/NAPE) Conference which comes up in November of this year in Lagos, Nigeria. The conference brings together professionals in oil and gas field, professors and faculties from the universities, students of various geosciences disciplines as well as other stakeholders servicing the oil industry in one capacity or the other.
No doubt, opportunities for professional development and credibility enhancement within the profession exist at the conference. My areas of strength and skills enhancement I have over twenty years oil and gas experience spanned over four continents – Europe, America, Middle East and Africa and therefore will be well versed in different geology of the world to make ample contribution at the various forums in the conference. I also have two years banking and financial experience before oil and gas employment.
This will greatly add value to the discussions about financing the highly risky oil and gas ventures in Nigeria. The current debate on the Petroleum Industry Bill to be passed in Nigeria offers a significant opportunity for Public Policy analysis hat can be of great benefit to me. With my recent learnings about public administration and expectations of leadership, I hope to contribute effectively in many of the contentious discussions around this policy.
I will like to enhance my skills in managing differing issues by various contributors as there exist many views by the different governmental, institutional and community stakeholders at the conference. Even amongst oil industry professionals, there are differing viewpoints, hence a sleek collaboration effort will be required to rally the troops and get a meaningful agreement. I will also likely enhance the array of oil service company executives that can form alliance in future business with our company.
This will have to be done within the guiding limits of established ethical principles of my company. Networking goals for the conference My goals for professional networking at the conference will be to meet with many of my old professional colleagues form different oil and gas companies and get updated on their contacts as I have Just returned to the country in July after a 4-year international assignment to the Sultanate of Oman.
I will also like to meet the main olicy influencers on the government regulating side of the oil and gas business so I can later make direct contacts with them in order to keep abreast of the development with all inclusive and potentially beneficial Petroleum Industry Bill. I will deliberately offer to make comment on many of the poster and oral session so as to generate interesting discussion and feedback that will be beneficial to my PSL course goals.
I also hope to make meaningful contributions beyond the average competence of the technical professional that will ginger some kind of follow-up interest by the resenters in order to keep the relationship developed simmering. Networking activities at the conference In my desire to network effectively, I will plan the attendance of ice-breakers, formal and informal dinners and also social groups for chatting and networking purposes. I will also attend the African night and award dinner events to show support for recipients which will further enhance my credibility.
Many of the service companies where a number of my old school colleagues works also organize receptions for operators as a way of smoothening their relationship. I will surely attend as many as ossible where conflicting priorities permit. There has been studies and investigations on the effects of entrepreneurial personality traits, background and networking activities on venture growth among several entrepreneurs in small and medium sized businesses with interesting result on how networking significantly increase value at various levels in the organization.
The most important asset of an organization is the people executing the vision and mission of the organization. Human beings are ruled by pride, prejudice, anger, exuberance and so many more emotions that made their predictability an intractable problem. Therefore the more ssociates a leader is able to build amongst his key stakeholders the better be becomes at getting their commitment for success in the organization. Personality traits include need for achievement, internal locus of control, self-reliance and extroversion the background to these human traits falls mainly on education and experience.
Therefore networking activities consist of size and frequency of communication networks one can build in the course of interaction during and possibly after the conference. The results of various interconnected structural models of networking indicate that experience, networking activities, and numbers of artners as well as internal locus of control and need for achievement all have positive impact on organization growth. Two other personality traits, self-reliance and extroversion have negative impact on number of partners and positive impact on networking activities, respectively.
The impact of education on venture growth, however, is moderated by firm size, positive for larger firms and negative for smaller firms. Among several factors that one might conside, an entrepreneur’s industrial and managerial experience is the dominating factor affecting organizational growth. Themes that appeal the most to me The Federal Government of Nigeria has focus on getting more revenue from the oil industry in Nigeria as oil has been the mainstay of the economy since the 70s and therefore had reviews of the Memorandum of Understanding on oil and gas exploitation with the Multinational Oil companies.
The theme of the conference that appealed the most to me is policy initiatives for anhanced exploration and reserves growth. The gains of the Memorandum of Understanding (MolJ) introduced into the industry in 1986 was Just beginning to peter out when deepwater exploration came n with impressive results. These prompted the Government of Nigeria to set ambitious goals of 40 billion barrels reserve and 4 million barrels per day production by 2010 which are yet to be realized.
On the contrary, the industry has started to witness declining reserves and production owing to reduced exploration whereas concomitant exploration successes in several African countries will invariably put pressure on Nigeria as a competing destination for oil and gas investment. The Federal Government will therefore need to put the right policies in place to reverse he trend by encouraging exploration in existing productive terrains as well as frontier basins.
In this sub-theme of the NAPE conference, papers are requested to examine: 1 . Effectiveness of existing policies to drive growth in the oil and gas industry, 2. Challenges of existing policies, 3. Cost management in the face of policy implementation and 4. Development of road maps and new policy initiatives. My ability to grasp all the aspects of these policy initiatives and their implications will augur well for my future prospect of being a policy entrepreneur and adviser to ederal or state government on oil and gas policy issues.
My local government area is the site of a huge deposit of tar sands that has been discovered for a long time without any immediate exploitation plans by the government who has absolute control on mineral wealth in the nation. The advocating of workable policy to encourage the monetization of the deposit is one of the future values to be derived from this conference participation. References Crosby, B. C. and Bryson. J. M. (2005). Leadership for the Common Good: Tackling Public Problems in a Shared-Power World. Hoboken, NJ: Jossey-Bass. http://nape. org. ng/conference/