By Franklin Alli

The Federal Government has scheduled February 1, 2014 to commence full implementation of metering system in the oil and gas industry under its Weights and Measures Act.

The Director of Weights and Measures, Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment, Engr. Oluyinka Joseph Sikuade, who disclosed this at the weekend, said: “This year is dedicated as year of implementation of legal metrology services in oil and gas sector that will enable stakeholders to conform with the Weights and Measures Regulation 25, Vol. 99 of 16th April, 2012   section 7(2) and 30 (b).

“We are going to look at the metering system of the operators for accuracy, equity, fairness and conformity. We will take into consideration internationally acceptable error margin for us to have fair and justice in trading devices use by the operators.

“Constitution behold on the Ministry that the weights and measures department is custodian of National   primary standards to which other standards in Nigeria must be trace to. We have the expertise to go into details of this sector to perform our statutory duty efficiently in this very vital sector of the economy. Measuring instrument used for trade in this sector must be within the maximum permissible error margin the law recognized, he said.

He said that henceforth, calibrators and testing laboratories in Nigeria must first obtain certificate from the Weights and Measures before calibration certificates issued by them can be recognized.

Engr Sikuade stated that the interest of OPTS is paramount to government and urged them to strictly patronized only those Calibrator who had obtained the department certification for calibration of their instruments.

Source: VANGUARD