Exploration

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Nigerdock has played an important role in Totals Egina project, a flagship project for Nigeria

Adebola Adesoye, the company’s General Manager, Operations, told Oil Review Africa about Nigerdock’s success in meeting the challenges of fabricating and loading out 7,000 tonnes of major components for the FPSO without any lost time incidents on more than 4 million man-hours of execution.

“There are always challenges in any project of this nature,” said Mr Adesoye. “One of the main technical challenges was in planning and construction sequencing. Typically, some structures have over 7,000 joints to be welded. This required a major planning and project management approach to prioritising work flows, ensuring just in time materials and sub-component readiness, simultaneous operations and parallel critical path work execution; simply to define what to weld first.”

“We also had to do a lot of logistic movements of very large structures within the yard, which was only possible because Nigerdock owns such a vast array of equipment specifically for that purpose. In terms of work execution, it was extremely challenging for fabricators and welders to complete their works on these complex structures due to awkward weld angles, in confined spaces and the likes, so we had to increase the training of our professional workforce,” he said. “Other challenges on such a scale of project boil down to identification of risks and planning, and mitigation of those to avoid injury or harm to people or the assets as well as maintain quality and schedule. This approach was very much a collaborative effort between Nigerdock, Samsung Heavy Industries, and the main client, Total Upstream Nigeria.”

Of interest to many was that Nigerdock fabricated and loaded out the 732-ton flare tower structure for the Egina FPSO which was then transported to Korea for initial integration on the vessel. So when the Egina vessel arrived in Nigeria it already contained some “made in Nigeria components” fabricated in Nigerdock. Mr Adesoye said this was only made possible by the fact that Nigerdock owns all its equipment and has developed competent professional personnel over the years. Such development and achievements are a testament to the effectiveness of the Nigerian Oil and Gas Industry Content Development (NOGICD) Act and collaborative efforts of the NCDMB and the investment appetite of the Nigerdock owners - Jagal.

Like other Nigerian companies involved in the Egina project, local content was an imperative to Nigerdock. Mr Adesoye said that the training and development required to create a competent Nigerian workforce together with associated capacity-building has resulted in the graduation of the country’s top fabrication professionals fully committed to World Class safety standards.He also stressed the importance of adequate attention and compliance to the holistic benefit for the workforce and their families, professionalism with our vendors and suppliers, alignment with the community and solid compliant and professional relationships with clients and associated Government departments so that everyone’s needs are understood and aligned within budget and schedule “creating a stakeholder win-win situation.”

“NOGICD Act has been a huge enabler for us to achieve the level we are now at,” said Mr Adesoye. “Local content imperatives have assisted in building human capability and the country’s capacity and specifically has been beneficial to Nigerdock over the years by assuring domestication of work that previously would have been exported. This approach together with the Nigerian Shareholders investment appetite has enabled us to create a world class facility at Nigerdock.

He added that Nigerdock stands out above its peers because of the professional, dedicated, competent workforce and by taking care of corporate social responsibility: “We always strive to be in harmony with the stakeholders with whom Nigerdock operates.”

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