Federal Government’s plans to increase crude oil production to four million barrels daily (bpd) will receive a boost, as the multi-billion dollar Egina Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) vessel, currently being constructed in South is schedule to add 200,000 bpd to Nigeria’s output by the fourth quarter of 2018.
Total Upstream Nigeria Limited (TUPNI) said the completion of the 200,000bpd vessel would be on schedule and within budget as Samsung Heavy Industries (SHI) is nearing its completion.
When TUPNI and the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB), insisted that the Egina FPSO must be integrated in Nigeria, it was quite a challenge to find the shipbuilding company, which would build an integration yard.
In the global oil and gas industry, the fabrication and integration of the FPSO modules requires high-end technology, which only a few international companies have the capacity to take on the scope of responsibility.
As the 1,200 Nigerian technical experts, fully trained by Samsung Heavy Industries (SHI) were successfully performing the fabrication of Egina FPSO topside modules, LADOL, a logistic company, provided ferry and power supply.
Apart from the FPSO modules that were fabricated at the Samsung yard, other scopes of the Egina FPSO project were also executed in other local yards, such as Saipem, Nestoil, Dorman Long, Nigerdock and Aveon Offshore, among others, thus ensuring the development of local capacity and capability.
Located on Oil Mining Lease (OML) 130 offshore, the Egina deepwater field, the Managing Director/Chief Executive, TUPNI, Nicolas Terraz, disclosed that the Egina FPSO is planned to sail away from SHI in South Korea this third quarter to arrive Nigeria before year end.
He explained that beyond the expected 200,000 bpd addition, Total is committed to the development of local industry capacity, adding that the company boasts of 24 million man-hours of work done in-country representing 77 per cent of the work load for the project. This is equivalent to a workforce of 3,000 persons on average in the last five years.
Total has achieved fabrication of approximately 60,000 tonnes of equipment in various yards in-country; including specialised equipment like pressure vessels, flare tower, helideck, living quarter’s structures, large FPSO structures and complex subsea structures like Subsea Manifolds.
“297,000 man-hours of work on the basic engineering for the Egina Project was performed in Lagos by three Nigerian Companies Netco/Batelitwin, Crestech and Dover, representing 94 percent of the total man-hours spent,” he said.
The Executive Secretary, NCDMB, Simbi Wabote, said the establishment of the FPSO as evidence of Nigerian Content implementation, adding that “today, Nigeria is able to handle 60,000 metric tonnes of fabrication in-country.”
He said the Nigerian Oil and Gas industry will between now and year 2027 aspire to domesticate the full capacity and capability required for the integration of FPSO.
The new target for the industry follows from the successful in-country fabrication of six modules of the Total Egina FPSO and scheduled integration of the modules on the FPSO, the first time these feats would ever happen in Nigeria.
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