Yemisi Izuora
The Nigerian Senate Committees on Gas and Petroleum (Upstream) have commended Total and its partners for the remarkable progress made towards the completion of the Egina Floating, Storage, Production and Offloading (FPSO) unit, which is currently being finalized at the Samsung Heavy Industries (SHI) Yard in LADOL Free Zone, Lagos.
Senator Omotayo Alasoadura, who is chair of the Senate Committee on Petroleum Resources and his Gas Committee counterpart, Senator Barnabas Gemade, led their committees on an inspection tour of the 330m-long Egina FPSO where they expressed delight with the pace of work on the unit and its massive Nigerian content profile.
“Seeing the Egina FPSO has shown that a good investment has been made to ensure that Nigeria moves deeper and deeper into the sea to exploit its God-given endowment of oil,” stated an elated Senator Alasoadura, pointing out that touring the FPSO facility had been a very wonderful experience.
“I believe that with Egina going operational very soon, Nigeria will be able to meet its quota not only to OPEC but also will have enough to meet its other commitments. I believe that it is a good project and Total has done a great thing bringing such an FPSO to Nigeria making it first in Africa. This milestone has brought us to where we should be as the giant of Africa,” he added.
On the local content work being done on the project, Senator Alasoadura said: “It is massive development of capacity. You cannot do much for local development without building capacity and that has been done by giving Nigerians the opportunity to build part of what we are seeing here today. I am sure the next time it will take less money and time to build something similar because of developed capacity.”
In his remarks, Senator Gemade who led the Senate committee on Gas said, “We are very excited about the participation of Nigerians that are technically qualified in major and huge projects like Egina. This impact cannot just be swept under the carpet. Those responsible for actualising this project must be commended.”
The Managing Director of Total Upstream Companies in Nigeria, Mr Nicolas Terraz, thanked the senators for taking the time to visit the Egina FPSO saying, “What you are seeing here is a product of the hard work of our staff, many of whom are Nigerians, along with our very supportive partners and Nigerian authorities.”
Other senators on the visit were Senators Gershom Bassey, Magnus Abe, Samuel Egwu, Peter Nwaoboshi, Benjamin Uwajumogu, Baba Garbai, Ogola Foster and Ibrahim Kurfi.
The Egina FPSO cast anchor at the SHI-MCI quayside, LADOL Island, Lagos, after her 86-day journey from South Korea to Nigeria on January 28, 2018 for the integration of six locally fabricated topside modules.
Being the first project to be launched after the enactment of the Nigerian Oil & Gas Industry Content Development Act in 2010, the ongoing integration and work on the Egina project pushes the Nigerian local content on the project to the highest level and has set a benchmark for the Nigerian Oil & Gas Industry.