THE Chief Executive Officer of Oilserv, an oil and gas, engineering and construction company, Emeka Okwuosa has identified factors militating against movement of indigenous oil companies into deepwater operations. Speaking on the sidelines of the just ended Offshore Technology Conference, OTC, organized by the Petroleum Technology Association of Nigeria, PETAN, in Houston, Texas, United States of America, Okwuosa identified capacity building, collaboration and technology as necessary issues that must be embraced by indigenous companies to be able to compete favourably with the international oil companies, IOCs, in deepwater operations. He said: “We require assembling capacity and integrating that capacity by working together in other to have synergy and be able to deal with bigger scope. But we are in the integration of FPSO (Floating, Production, Storage and Offloading) which is the issue of topsides. Nigerians are in drilling, pipelines, flow-risers. We are doing a lot but it is very competitive and capital intensive and we have to slowly build it up as soon as we can because we have proven capacity but we need to do more because there is so much out there. “It is the Nigerian factor. Everyone wants to do things in his own way and it is not the way to go. If you go to houses with 20 flats, instead of one tenant providing energy and everyone connects to it, you will see everybody with his own generator. It is a Nigerian factor. It is about understanding that the way to create value requires working together and not as an individual and we are going to get there.”
Okwuosa advocated for collaboration and synergy between PETAN members to be able to handle bigger jobs and compete with the IOCs. He said: “We have been adding value but not the level we desire. So the way we can achieve this is by collaborating and synergizing between entities like PETAN and all PETAN members and be able to handle bigger scope and compete with international service providers.
“We are already operating in that terrain in reality. When you say deepwater operation, you look at it from two different points of views. Are you looking at exploration and production (E&P), which is ownership or are you looking at services. I will talk from services point of view. Nigerians have been participating in services in Bonga, Akpo, Usan. All these have had Nigerians’ input. There are two key issues with participation in deep-water arena. It is about technology and capital. Both will take time normally to scale up. Nigerians are participating but we are only scratching the surface.
Source: Vanguard
