Petroleum Technology Development Fund, PTDF, has said it is focusing to training its 2024 Post Graduate Scholarship awardees in renewable energies, especially, Compressed Natural Gas, and other areas of gap. The Fund explained that foreign overseas scheme is aimed at bridging identified skilled gaps within the oil and gas industry in line with its mandate to build capacity within the oil and gas industry. The General Manager in charge of Projects, PTDF, Mrs. Ifeoma Nwokike, disclosed this while fielding questions from pressmen on the sideline of the screening for the South-South geo-political zone held at the Institute of Petroleum and Energy Studies, University of Port Harcourt, Rivers State, yesterday.
Nwokike noted that the successful candidates would be sent to top Universities abroad particularly in the United Kingdom, adding PTDF trains the best of Nigerians and that their scholars are known everywhere in the world. She said: “We are sending them to top class Universities, and they go there. A lot of them have achieved so much even in the institutions where we send them. And that is why we take our time to select the very best.” Nwokike named the areas of focus for the scholarship as areas of gaps listimg them to include Engineering, Geo-Sciences, Environmental Studies and Renewable. “You know that renewable is the emerging field in the oil and gas industry. So, we are also interested in all those ones. We have about 600 candidates that we are interviewing for this centre in Port Harcourt. It is done in the six geo-political zones of the country simultaneously,” Nwokike said.
She said the number of people to be selected would depend on the funds available, saying, “When we complete this exercise, we will look at our funding and we look at how much it will take for us to train one candidate then we now determine how many we are going to pick this year. However, on the criteria used for the screening, the Team Lead, Overseas Scholarship Interview Programme, Port Harcourt Centre, Ere Iyalla, said, “The criteria we use, first we look at your credentials, how good we have scored in your undergraduate and WAEC levels. And then we look at your research proposal for your statement of purpose. How it fits into the needs of the industry and then we look at your professional membership because that gives you close to practice to access you.”
