Ms Diezani Alison Madueke minister of petroleum resources said that Nigeria can begin the export of steel pipes to member countries of the Economic Community of West Africa States in a few years.

The pipe mill factory which is as a result of government's local content policy, has the capacity to produce 100 tonnes of helical welded pipes annually, while the full demand in tonnage of pipe in Nigeria is said to be between 1million to 1.2million ton annually, leaving room for more investors to come in.

The minister, who was visibly pleased with the development, said that "I will expect to see this sort of pipe mill and fabrication yards begin to pop up in different areas of the country, this was the whole intent of the Nigerian content act. You can only imagine the quantum of foreign direct investment that we will begin to save in this country over the next 5 to 10 years. We are very impressed. I must thank the IOCs who have supported these types of projects."

Mr Levy Yuval MD of SCC Nigeria Limited informed that the company started with about 50 expatriates workers, but in line with the content Act policy, it today has only four expatriate workers.

He said their plan was to further reduce the number of expatriate staff and hand over all operations to Nigerian workers within a 2 year period.

(Sourced from www.leadership.ng)