WHY A LAWYER CAN BE NNPC GMD
President Muhammad Buhari recently appointed Mr. Ibe Kachikwu, someone with Law background as Group Managing Director of Nigeria’s national oil company, NNPC. I’m sure a lot of people would have been surprised.
This is absolutely in order. You don’t need to be a Geologist or Petroleum/Chemical Engineer before you run an oil company.
Agreed that oil and gas is a technical industry, but at some point in the career ladder, you need more than technical knowledge, you need management knowledge. CEO-ing any company goes beyond the technical aspect of the company’s activities. How do you structure deals? How do you read global economic trends and take decisions that can make or mar your company? These go beyond designing pipelines.
That is why CEOs are supported by EDs who usually have specialty in each field. In the case of NNPC, it is the ED Exploration & Production that must be an engineer or geologist.
Again, at some point in the career pyramid, you get to know other fields in your industry perhaps almost as much as that of person specializing in that field.
I have less than 4 years experience in the upstream industry, but there is a limit to how a petroleum engineer of similar experience can bamboozle me. I will flow with him to an appreciable extent. Reason? Roles are cross-functional and as an oil and gas tax accountant, I needed to know about depth of wells (royalty), daily production (royalty), equipment(rigs, well heads, christmas tree etc) used (capital allowance), structure of contracts (sole risk? JV? PSC? etc).
How much more someone that has been in the industry for 30 years, rising to become Vice Chair at the number one oil company in the world, ExxonMobil.
Someone with law background in the industry probably comes better positioned. The industry is about contracts.
By the way the CEO of top oil companies, like Oando, also have law background. They just bring the investments and business strategy and get the engineers do the operations.
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