Oscarline Onwuemenyi
16 July 2016, Sweetcrude, Abuja – The National Engineering and Technical Company Limited (NETCO), a subsidiary of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), grew its profit before tax to N2.5 billion within three years from N193 million and N963 million in 2012 and 2013 respectively, the company has disclosed.
Chairman of NETCO, Mr. Bello Rabiu disclosed this yesterday in Abuja during the company’s combined Annual General Meeting (AGM) for the three years that the profit margin represented a 160 per cent increase for the firm.
He also said the company increased its revenue by 49 per cent from N7.9 billion in the previous year to N11.8 billion in 2014, and that the increase was mainly from the contract it executed for Samsung Heavy Industries Nigeria Limited on the Total Egina Floating Production Storage and Offloading vessel (FPSO).
Rabiu explained that NETCO was able to record such profit despite the harsh operating environment in the oil and gas sector.
“Despite the challenges in the oil and gas industry, NETCO recorded impressive performance during the years under review. The profit before tax exponentially increased from N193million in 2012 to N963million in 2013 and N2.5billion in 2014,” he said.
Rabiu further explained that the reason for the combined AGMs was due to the migration of the National Accounting Standards to International Financial Standard Reporting which took auditors a while to complete.
“In addition, there was no substantive managing director in NETCO for a period of 15 months,” he stated.
Speaking to journalists in the background of the event, the Managing Director of NETCO, Mr. Sikuye Aliyu, said that for the first time in Nigeria, NETCO was able to collaborate with two other local engineering companies and together the joint venture was able to record more than 550,000 man-hours on a strategic project.
“We did the entire detail engineering for the Total JV Egina FPSO project and we delivered it on time, safely and within budget. So that really tells you that there’s a lot of capabilities in the country and NETCO being the largest indigenous engineering company in Nigeria is really putting all the other resources together to execute all these projects.
“And we can do that for other projects that are still coming as there are quite a number of them in the pipeline now,” he said.
Aliyu further disclosed that NETCO was partnering the engineering division of the NNPC to fix the country’s refineries and urged operators to see the firm as the first point of call for engineering, procurement and construction activities in the country.
According to him, “Currently we have what we call the engineering division of the NNPC that has actually been supervising and doing all the work in the refineries. But right now NETCO is working with them and we intend to collaborate with them to do a lot more work in the refineries.”
“For me NETCO should be the go-to company for all engineering activities that NNPC may have. We should be the first stop and it is only when we cannot do it that we should take it out. And I have also appealed to the chairman and a number of other stakeholders that they should come to us as the go-to company.
“This is because we’ve grown from just an engineering company to an engineering, procurement and construction company by joining other partners locally to be able to execute projects. We have executed two EPC projects successfully. There is one with Nigerian Gas Company, which was successfully done and right now we are doing another one with Mobil which is a $500 million contract and we are executing it,” he added.
He stated that the firm plans to expand its collaboration with international engineering companies, adding that NETCO will sign some memorandum of understanding with foreign EPC firms.
