Nnamdi is the Head of Environmental Operations and Oil Spill preperedness and response coordinator at Total E&P Nigeria Ltd. His job involves assessment of oil spill risk and contingency planning, training of in-house oil spill emergency teams, oil spill modeling, trajectory simulations and response coordination. He is also responsible for the management of contaminated lands, general waste management and regulatory environmental compliance monitoring activities.
Nnamdi joined Total E&P Nigeria as an Environmental Officer in 2006, and consulted for a number of private companies in Nigeria in areas of oil spill site clean-ups, contaminated land remediation and environmental impact assessment. In 2007, he was appointed the oil spill preparedness and response coordinator and environment operations officer. In this new position, Nnamdi was responsible for oil spill contingency planning, development and implementation of oil spill drills as well as affiliate’s environment reporting. In 2010, he was appointed Head of Environment Operations while still maintaining his role of Oil Spill P&R Coordinator, responsible for a team of six specialist staff. In 2011, he was also appointed the project leader for the decommissioning of the Ogbogu flare-pit, handling the job alongside his main function as Head of Environment Operations.
Nnamdi, who is also a fellow of the Nigerian Enviornmental Society (NES), wanted to join the IES in order to have an international affiliation with experts in environmental issues:
"...[I] wanted to affiliate with an international association to benchmark my progression in the field of environmental management with other experts. I carried out a search of international professional bodies, reviewed the coverage and membership requirements... [and found] the IES had broader coverage of environmental issues than a couple of the other associations."
Nnamdi is a Charterd Environmentalist with the Insitution, and gained his CEnv status via his attendance on the popular Cenv-in-a-day workshops.
Nnamdi describes the best aspects of his job as oil spill modelling and trajectory simulation, contaminated land risk assessment and conceptual site modeling, as it relates to finding solutions for perceived difficult situations and the opportunity to help mitigate or remediate negative impacts. Another aspect of his job that Nnamdi enjoys is engagement of stakeholders in the processes of contaminated site risk assessment and the implementation of remedial measures.
Nnamdi considers the most exciting projects he works on to involve one of the legacy issues of the oil and gas industry:
"[An issue] emanating from old practices was the indiscriminate construction of burrow and waste pits... I was saddled with the role of developing and implementing management option for these pits in our onshore operations. This particular project brought to fore in my activities the principles of sustainability as I had to review various management options which included the remediation of contaminated pits, fencing of pits with high exposure to third parties and community member and conversion of uncontaminated pits into fish ponds through the community support agricultural programme. In the development of the project. After a sustainability appraisal of the identified management options and the empirical characterization of the pits, candidates pits were identified for conversion into fish ponds. The idea of converting pits, which were unsustainable situations into a sustainable project, is quite exciting."
In the future, Nnamdi plans to build his capacity in the management of contaminated lands and sustainable urban regeneration via the part-time Masters of Research he is currently studying with the Universtiy of Nottingham. He intends to continue to work in the environmental function in Total as a specialist, and hopes to eventually retire into his lifelong goal of teaching in a universtiy.
