$3.3bn Total’s Egina FPSO Departs to Offshore Oil Field Soon

* NCDMB audits remittances to it, checkmates abuse of $200m local content fund

Chineme Okafor in Abuja

The $3.3 billion Floating Production Storage Offloading (FPSO) unit for the 200,000 barrels per day (bd) capacity Egina Deepwater oilfield, which arrived in Nigeria in January this year from South Korea, will finally depart for the Egina oilfield in the coming weeks, THISDAY has learnt.

The Deputy Managing Director for Deep Water at Total Exploration and Production Nigeria, Mr Ahmadu-Kida Musa, disclosed this at the 2018 edition of the Nigeria Oil and Gas Conference and Exhibition (NOG) which started on Monday in Abuja with a seminar on Nigeria’s local content law.

Musa explained in his opening remarks at the seminar that the FPSO, which had the detailed engineering of its topsides executed in-country after it arrived from South Korea by Samsung with a consortium of Nigerian engineering companies, will sail away to Egina field, which he noted, is located in Oil Mining Lease (OML) 130, approximately 150 kilometres offshore Port Harcourt.

According to him, it is expected to begin producing 200,000bd of oil from the field. He also stated that this would account for 10 per cent of Nigeria’s total oil production when finally in operation.

“Egina is the latest of Total’s deepwater developments and the third project of its kind developed by Total in Nigeria, after Akpo and Usan.

“These projects have brought progressive increase in levels of Nigerian Content and this is well illustrated by the percentage of total project workload performed in Nigeria: from 44 per cent for Usan, Total recorded 60 per cent for Akpo and now 77 per cent will be achieved for Egina just before the FPSO sails away from the SHI-MCI Yard in LADOL Island, Lagos where it is currently moored for topsides integration works,” said Musa.

He then stated: “In the coming weeks, the FPSO will sail away to Egina field, which is located in OML 130, approximately 150 kilometres offshore Port Harcourt.

“It is the deepest offshore development carried out so far in Nigeria, in water depths of over 1,500 metres and the project is designed to produce 200,000 barrels per day of oil at Plateau.

“In addition to the oil, the Egina field will produce gas. Associated gas will be partly re-injected into the reservoir to maintain reservoir pressure, and partly channelled to supply the domestic gas market.”

He explained that Nigeria was proud Egina has advanced its local content policy to new levels in many domains, adding that it amongst others, led to the development of a new fabrication and integration yard which is reportedly Africa’s first FPSO integration quay.

“It was constructed under the FPSO package contract bySH)-MCI within Lagos deep offshore logistics base on LADOL Island. Today, the Egina project is proudly the first to record the fabrication and integration of FPSO topsiders in Nigeria.

“Six of the 18 topside modules were fabricated and integrated at the SHI-MCI facility at LADOL. The Egina FPSO arrived from Korea in the last week of January for the integration of the locally fabricated modules and this integration was successfully completed in May, without incident,” he added.

Speaking on what needs to be done to deepen adherence to the country’s local content policy in her oil industry, Musa explained that both government and operators would need to cooperate to ensure that a stable business environment is sustained for the industry.

He said operators had in the past three years of oil price slump, cut down their costs on deepwater projects to ensure they stayed in business.

According to him, “With several large deep-water discoveries still to be developed, such as Bonga South West or Owowo, we know that the resources are there. All the yards that have been involved in the development of the Egina project need activity to maintain their infrastructure and the improved competency levels of their human capital.

“Both government and the industry have a critical role to play here. In the past three years, to keep the industry alive, all the operators have been focusing on reducing the cost of new deepwater projects in order to make sure that they can sanction projects and bring value at $50 per barrel.

“While the operators are all trying to tighten their belt in line with the realities of the times, it is important that we put in place sustainable PSC and gas terms as this is a fundamental requirement for continued investment in Nigeria’s deep offshore.”

Meanwhile, the Executive Secretary of the Nigerian Content Development Monitoring Board (NCDMB), Mr. Simbi Wabote, has said that the board would take measures to ensure that operators who participate in its $200 million local content fund do not end up abusing the process and subsequently deflating the fund.

Wabote, in his presentation at the conference, also said the board has concluded to hand over to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), any operator who failed to remit what was due to it as requested by the local content law.

He noted that the board was undertaking a forensic audit of the remittances and had engaged the country’s judicial sector on how the local content law works with regards to such remittances to it.

“We were told by the agencies responsible for financial crimes that not remitting government fund in itself is a financial crime as it is contained in their acts, and as such, when we carry out this forensic audits, if we discover any breach of the processes, of course, we will hand over such to the agencies responsible to go after companies that want to sabotage the economy.

“The EFCC and ICPC will be responsible to go after such people who decides that they will not remit what is due government in terms of law,” he said.