The Institute of Piping Engineers of Nigeria is made up of Piping Engineering professionals especially in the oil and gas industry to promote practice of Piping Engineering and build local capacity in Nigeria. The Institute will also ensure adherence to best practices through training and certification of members. The Institute was established in November 2008 and currently has over 90 members. The membership is distributed over a wide range of Engineering and construction companies in the Oil and Gas industry.

Active practice of piping engineering discipline started in Nigeria in the early nineties at the National Engineering and Technical Company, NETCO, a company that was initially established by NNPC and Becthel Inc. of America. Bechtel later pulled out of the joint venture and the company became fully owned by NNPC but piping engineering profession has progressively developed to the extent that we now have very experience piping engineering personnel that can undertake even complex piping and plant Layout design.

The main effort of Piping Engineering is to translate a two-dimensional process flow diagram (i.e. Piping and Instrument Diagram, P & ID) that exists only in paper to a three dimensional process facility comprising extensive networks of piping and process equipment that can be built.  The Piping and layout engineer must therefore be able to demonstrate technical ability along with creative talent and common sense to design the process facility taking account of plant operation, maintenance, constructability safety and quality standards and of the plant.

Piping Engineering consumes about 50% of the design engineering man-hours, 35% of the material cost of the plant and about 30% of the labour cost in the field for a typical oil and gas facilities project. Indigenous Nigerian piping engineers’ participation in piping engineering has remained very marginal after over four decades of oil and gas activities in the country due to the under developed structure of piping and other related engineering practises. It is for this reason that the IPEN was established.