Egina sets new standards for local content in Nigeria's deep offshore
Egina sets new standards for local content in Nigeria’s deep offshore
Brought on stream in late 2018, the Egina project has successfully risen to a variety of technical challenges and made local content a key asset. Project Director Jean-Michel Guy tells us more about this project that sets an example to follow.
On December 29, 2018, the Egina field achieved its first oil. Under normal operating conditions, it will produce 200,000 barrels a day, or nearly 10% of the total output of Nigeria, the country where it is located.
With Egina, Africa is home to one of the largest oil and gas projects in the world. Located 150 kilometers off the coast of Nigeria, in a water depth of around 1,600 meters, Egina is one of the deepest offshore developments ever operated by Total. The floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel, used to process and store Egina crude oil until its transfer to a tanker, is the largest one Total has ever built.
According to Egina Project Director Jean-Michel Guy, who has worked at Total for over 30 years, the FPSO is “as big as three soccer fields and designed to store 2.3 million barrels of oil.” The project also includes 44 wells and 75 kilometers of subsea pipelines. The development of the field, discovered in 2003, was successfully completed well below the initial budget.
Another particularity of Egina is its use of local skills and expertise. First of all, this meant complying with the local regulations. The Nigerian Oil and Gas Industry Content Development Act was enacted in 2010, giving preference to local contractors and employees for service contracts in the oil and gas industry and creating the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB) to ensure compliance.
“But our commitment to host countries goes well beyond regulatory compliance,” says Jean-Michel Guy. “It’s one of the keys to our success. We simply cannot imagine a project without a local content component. It’s a question of commitment, community engagement and our social license to operate.”
Total’s local content policy focuses on three main areas: hiring and training local people, sourcing goods and services locally, and developing local infrastructure. Thanks to this policy, Egina enabled more than 250 Nigerian students to train as engineers and technicians, in order to build local capacity in the skills and expertise required for the project.
In addition, more than half of the contractors involved in building Egina’s infrastructure were Nigerian, and close to 77% of the hours worked on the project were onsite, in Port Harcourt or Lagos.
Lastly, infrastructure in the country has been upgraded or built, as illustrated by the shipyard and its 500-meter-long jetty, which were used to manufacture and integrate the FPSO modules. “For the first time ever, six of the eighteen modules that make up the FPSO were fabricated and integrated here in Nigeria,” adds the project director. “In total, 35% of all equipment was made locally and nearly 10,000 people were involved in the project.”
The bulk of the project is now complete, but some of the local companies and operators will continue to work with Total. “We’ll be using contractors for maintenance and inspection operations for many years to come,” notes Jean-Michel Guy.
“Egina has opened up new opportunities for the country. It has set a benchmark that anybody who wants to foray into this area will have to match […] or better,” said the Nigerian Minister of State, Petroleum Resources, Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu, when the project came on stream. “Having achieved this much in terms of local content, future fields will hopefully do much, much better,” he added. “Most importantly, we fulfilled our local content obligations and set new standards in this area, while also maintaining strong quality and safety,” comments Jean-Michel Guy. “And that is very satisfying.”
With operations in more than 130 countries, Total is a top-tier international oil and gas company and a major player in low-carbon energies. We discover, produce, process, sell and market energy in a variety of forms, all the way to end-customers.
Committed to better energy, our staff of 98,000 employees help provide customers throughout the world with products and services that are safer, cleaner, more efficient, more innovative and accessible to as many people as possible.
Our ambition is to become the responsible energy major.
» Visit Total.comFollow Total:
