NCDMB to Flag-off Egina Project in Q4, Applauds LADOL Compliance to Local Content

The Executive Secretary of the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB), Simbi Kesiye Wabote has applauded the pace of work at the Lagos Deep Offshore Logistics base (LADOL), stressing that he will be on hand to inaugurate the Egina FPSO in the fourth quarter of this year.

Wabote stated this in Lagos when he led a team of his officials and other top industry service providers and international oil companies (IOCs) on a facility tour of the base at the Apapa Ports Complex, Lagos.

LADOL is currently playing host to the fabrication of a $3.8 billion oil and gas logistics service facility commonly known as the Floating Production Storage and Offloading –FPSO rig, otherwise called the Egina project.

The project which has been applauded as first -of- its- kind in the sub-Saharan Africa is being handled by the Korea-based Samsung Heavy Industries (SHI) on behalf of Total Oil Exploration, with LADOL serving as its local content partner.

He said the indigenous oil and gas logistics service provider is a testimony of the success story of local content laws in Nigeria.

On the pace of work at LADOL, he said: “So far so good I have seen remarkable progress. I was here in December last year and I saw some of these things been fabricated. Today I am here again, I can see a discipline work force. My only fear now is what will happen to the thousands of Nigerians working here if we do not have projects coming on stream. As you recall I have been going round to visit some of the IOCs in the last few weeks to ask them the projects they have on stream and their challenges.

“We are also looking at how the Nigerian content can help accelerate those projects so that we can keep Nigerians employed. Luckily for us, this is the first integration on FPSO that is happening in Nigeria and I believe that nobody can tell is now that we cannot do it. Now we have fabricated six module, the next project should go beyond that, we cannot as a country go backwards it is only forward that we can go. So I tell project promoters, the IOCs and indigenous companies that we must have a benchmark in the future FPSO that we have in the country using Egina as a benchmark of what is acceptable in the country.