By Ndubuisi Micheal Obineme
Total’s Egina FPSO is a testimony for the Nigerian Local Content to the fact that large deepwater projects can be developed with a very high level of in-country activities, thus fulfilling the aspirations and objectives of the Federal Government of Nigeria in terms of employment generation, capacity building and industrial capability development.
Egina FPSO is the largest investment project currently on-going in the Nigerian oil and gas industry with a production capacity of 200,000 barrels of oil per day. The overall progress of the project stands at 77% and a key milestone was achieved on the 26th August, 2018, when the FPSO sailed to Egina oil field, located in OML 130, 150km offshore Port Harcourt in Rivers state.
The oil field is controlled by Total Upstream Nigeria (24 per cent) in partnership with CNOOC (45 per cent), Sapetro (15 per cent) and Petrobras (16 per cent).
After some weeks the FPSO sailed to the EGINA oil field, Total alongside the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and other investors attended the 34th Annual Asia Pacific Petroleum Conference (APPEC) in Singapore to launch the EGINA crude. The conference which was held on September 24 to 26, 2018, has grown to become Asia’s most prestigious industry conference and has served as a focal point for the exchange of ideas and business networking in the Asia-Pacific and global oil markets.
Being the first major deepwater development project launched after the enactment of the Nigerian Oil & Gas Industry Content Development (NOGICD) Act of 2010, Egina has the highest level of local content of any such project in Nigeria.
Key Nigerian Content features of the Egina project include:
- Employment: 24 million man-hours worked in Nigeria (77% of total project workload), equivalent to a workforce of 3,000 persons on average over a period of 5 years;
- Fabrication: 60,000 tons of equipment to be fabricated in Nigeria;
- Training: over 560,000 man-hours of human capacity development training across Egina contracts;
- Infrastructure: construction of several large-scale new fabrication facilities in Nigeria and upgrade of several existing fabrication yards.
The Egina project is pioneering Nigerian Content achievements:
- Egina has the highest number of FPSO topside modules fully fabricated and integrated in Nigeria.
- The assembly of the Integrated Control and Safety System of the FPSO was fully performed in Nigeria.
- Egina includes the fabrication of the largest subsea equipment (manifolds, risers) ever completed in Nigeria, far above what was achieved in previous projects.
Today, reference is being made to Total as the industry benchmark for the Nigerian content, given its significant support and investment in local content development through major oil and gas projects such as Egina projects. Egina has the highest deep water local content ever in Nigeria.
The Managing Director of Total Nigeria, Mr. Nicholas Terraz, said that the Egina FPSO is a project that Total is very proud of based on the practicability of the Nigerian content carried out in the project.
Mr. Nicholas said Total has a working partnership with Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Nigeria Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB) with the aim of developing local content which will strengthen the Nigeria oil and gas industry.
According to him, Total is an integrated company involved in Upstream, Midstream and Downstream activities not only to produce energy but to supply energy to the people with up to 3,000 employees in the upstream and downstream activities.
Mr. Nicholas disclosed that Total has invested $10 billion in Nigeria in the past five years. And, also involved on downstream distribution activities with over 500 service stations in each state in Nigeria.
“Total has a long history in Nigeria as the company started operation in Nigeria since 1956 with downstream activities, commissioned a filling station in Yaba and then moved into upstream in River State. 50 years ago we moved into deepwater operation in Usan, Akpo and now Egina oil fields. We are both in onshore and offshore in partnership with NNPC, indigenous companies, SNEPCO, ExxonMobil etc.”
Speaking further, Mr. Nicholas said the Egina oil field was discovered 14 years ago before it moved to the timeline for development. He added: “In Egina project, we are in partnership with NNPC, Sapetro, Petrobras and CNOOC. And, we would like to use this opportunity to commend our partners who has accompanied us in this very huge project”
Mr. Nicholas said Egina is the first deepwater development that was launched after the Nigerian Content Act. And, a lot of work was done between Total the operator, NNPC, NCDMB to look for possible ways of maximizing Nigerian local content.
“When we look at the last three deepwater developments in Nigeria, Akpo launched in 2005, Usan in 2008 and Egina in 2013. The field’s developments were operative by Total and i think is very interesting to look at the revolution in the Nigerian content as we can use many different metrics. One significant metrics is the quality of work done in-country compared to the workload of the project. 60% local content workload was done in Akpo field, Usan 44% and Egina 77% at the end of the project. I strongly believe that future projects will surpass 77% on local content.”
Deputy Managing Director, Total E&P, Engr. Ahmadu Musa Kida, said that Total was very bold to take a decision on many frontiers during that time. In 2012/2013, we have the PIB issues and you would also understand that nobody wanted to invest as the PIB isn’t passed. Despite all these, Total went ahead with the Egina project and as such the expression of that boldness was also carried along by our partners, NCDMB.”
He said Egina FPSO is one of the biggest FPSOs in Total’s portfolio which is competing in the global energy industry. With about 3030 metres of length, over 60 meters of width. Linked to the FPSO, the bottom is between 1.5 & 1.6 kilometers with all sorts of oil lines on different colours.
“The blue lines are the ones we will use to inject water into the reservoir and the red line will be used to export unused gas to the onshore. In the seabed, there are some big and small yellow decks on the seabed. The smaller yellow decks is the Christmas tree which was locally made and in-between them, you will see several hookups line and flow line. Typically, there are about 150km to 160km of lines.
“The vessel in the Egina FPSO is typically a drill ship. So, we have eight years of drilling and so far we have reached about five and half years. There was a time we have two rigs, but, now, we have only one rig. The bigger vessel in the FPSO are for tankers that comes to offload and there is a offloading buoy for the vessels,” he added.
He described Egina FPSO as one the biggest project that Total has embarked on in the offshore oil and gas industry as it will add up to 10% of Nigeria oil production when it start producing by December 2018.
The FPSO was built by Samsung Heavy Industries of Korea at a cost of $16 billion
