White Dove Shipping Company Limited has disclosed that its pioneering efforts in Alternative Crude Evacuation, which is mitigating crude theft and other losses arising from pipeline vandalism, has positioned it as the preferred local shipping operator for oil and gas companies in the country.

The company stated that despite the sector being capital intensive, it remained focused on its five-year strategic growth plan which would see it increase capacity from evacuating 50,000 bpd to 150,000 bpd.

Chiemezie Ejinima, the Chief Executive Officer of the company disclosed this in a virtual media chat with select maritime and energy reporters, where he stated that it intended to effectively cater to the crude evacuation needs of oil & gas players in the country.

He asserted that White Dove was able to create employment for Nigerians by seeing a subset of the shipping sector – crude evacuation – that wasn’t active and made it active, thus filling the gap in the value chain which was why it has over 90 percent local workers with plans to continue to grow the capacity of more local seafarers and maritime workers.

He said, “Our vessels are manned by Nigerians and we partner with the Nigeria Maritime Academy, Seafarers and other players to boost local expertise and capacity as we want to grow our local content to 100 percent in the nearest future’’.

He described the shipping sector as an important commercial sector, capable of employing thousands of Nigerians.

Ejinima explained that White Dove chose to focus on crude evacuation due to its huge economic potentials for the country, plus the need to make oil & gas companies get value for their investments, given that with the alternative crude evacuation, oil companies are assured of retaining their crude volumes from point of production to exportation.

“This will also boost the revenue accruable to the government as more royalties and taxes will be paid,” he added.

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According to him, the huge capital intensive nature of the sector, characterized by high acquisition and operating costs, remains one of the major reasons why foreign shipping companies still dominate, but as supportive banks, provide access to funding, more local players can begin to thrive in the sector.

‘’White Dove came on board as a one-stop-shop due to the gap noticed in the traditional evacuation of crude oil through pipelines. The age and accessibility of pipelines for crude transportation led to breaches and vandalism, thus creating the need for an alternative evacuation system through barges tankers and other vessels.

‘’We came in to ensure proper crude evacuation from the point of production to the point of export and our various vessels and transportation mode help to ensure that oil producers can be certain about the quantity of their products end-to-end’’ he added.