By Ndubuisi Micheal Obineme
Total’s $16bn FPSO which is currently berthed at the SHI-MCI Yard, Ladol island in Lagos is set to sail to the Egina Oil Field, located in OML 130, approximately 150 kilometres offshore Port Harcourt.
Total E&P Deputy Managing Director, Ahmadu-Kida Musa made the statement during his keynote address at the Nigeria Oil & Gas Conference & Exhibition (NOG) held on 2 – 5 July 2018 in Abuja.
According to him, TOTAL took the FID of EGINA in 2013, 3 years after the NOGIC Act. It became the test case of the law. The FPSO is the third of its kind developed by TOTAL in Nigeria. 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.
“It will sail in few weeks to the EGINA field. It is one of the deepest offshore developments in Nigeria. It is designed to produce 200, 000 bpd which is about 10 percent of Nigeria’s oil and gas production.
“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.
Mr. Musa further explained that the 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.
“Nigeria is proud that TOTAL has advanced Egina contract. For the first time for an FPSO, all management teams were based in-country.
“It has generated significant opportunities from administrative work to top flight engineers. It employed about 250 Nigerian engineers. We recorded 560,000 man-hour during the contract cycle. It is Africa’s first FPSO integration on land. It is a foster child of the Nigerian content.
“For local content to succeed, we need to have an investor friendly legislation. If we have that, Wabote’s words that a full integration of an FPSO must happen in Nigeria will come through.
“Government and industry have critical roles to play. We need to put in place a sustainable PSC and gas plan regime. This is important to maintaining industry capacity. We need to take a bold step in moving to the next level. Nigerian content is possible,” Mr. Musa said.