Total’s Engina field gets locally built manifolds to realise 200,000bpd output

Engineers at Aveon Offshore Nigeria Company have completed the construction of six sets of manifolds that would sit 1.5km deep in the sea, to suck oil from seabed wells and transfer to pipes, that would send to flow station and help Total’s Engina field deliver expected 200,000 bpd output next year.

The multi-million dollar project was launched yesterday at Rumuolumini jetty beside the Calabar River near Port Harcourt. Aveon built the sensitive manifolds as sub-contractors for Technip FMC of Norway as main contractors for Total, but at the successful unveiling and sail away event on Monday, the NNPC announced the upgrading of the company to a full grade contractor to enable them play bigger in the oil and gas industry.

At the load off and sail away event, Tein George, chairman of Aveon, said the company had invested $250m in eight years to develop the yard that built the sensitive manifolds while he said the partners had contributed $30m to boost investments.

George said Aveon achieved record time delivery to boost confidence in local fabrication and recorded zero in lost time and injury ranking after 5.5m hours, one of the best in the industry anywhere in the world.

Maikanti Baru, group managing director (GMD) of the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), an engineering fellow, cut the tape to launch the manifolds, and described the event as historic and a major breakthrough in the oil industry and in the drive towards Nigerian content.

Baru, while flagging off the last three manifolds, said; “By today’s event, we have reaffirmed our commitment to the Nigerian Content Act of April 2010. We celebrate here today a clear demonstration of the growing efficiency of the Nigerian Content Act. The Aveon yard now boasts of a dedicated carbon steel workshop, duplex welding facilities and painting workshops of over 8000 metres and a fully reinforced quayside among notable upgrades”.

He assured the management and workers that NNPC would ensure that the specialized yard would have jobs to keep afloat and deepen Nigeria’s participation in the oil industry. Baru also called for more projects to sustain such big investment and the 1500 workers that did the magic.

Speaking at the event, Simbi Wabote, executive secretary of the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB), urged other oil companies to emulate Total and bring such fabrications to Nigeria. He said he was happy that a Shell manager was on hand to take the message home just as he described Total as a true lover of Nigeria and her drive for local content.

Musa Kida, deputy managing director of Total, said the company took a huge risk to agree to hand such a project to be built in Nigeria for the first time. “We took a lot of battering for such a risk but we are happy today to record such a feat.” He said the manifolds would add 200,000 bpd next year and that the early delivery of the manifolds also means early completion of the Egina oil project.

On her part, Hans Christie Anderson, managing director of Technip FMC, said the manifolds would sit at the bed of the sea for 25 years, saying manufacturing such a vessel in Africa is a huge technological breakthrough for Nigeria.

Anderson said the Nigerian content was 81.5 per cent whereas the official requirement was 80 per cent. The CEO said her firm worked hard to ensure that the risk was worth it, saying that the greatest joy in the international community is the fact that the project was delivered after 5.5 million hours without any loss of life or injury or event lost time.

Ignatius Chukwu