OpeOluwani Akintayo
23 February 2018, Sweetcrude, Lagos – The Nigerian Natural Resource Charter, NNRC – a non-governmental organisation that promotes policy reforms in the extractive sector – has urged the Federal Government to publish contract details of Total’s multi-billion dollar Egina Floating Production Storage and Offloading, FPSO, vessel.
Team leader for facility for Oil Sector Transformation, FOSTER, Ademola Henry Adigun, made the call at the launch of NNRC’s 2017 Benchmark Exercise Report, BER, on Thursday in Lagos.
According to Adigun, publishing details of the contract of such magnitude as is the norm in other countries, would create room for transparency and accountability on government’s part.
“If there is nothing to hide, why would details of a contract of $16 billion not be published for everyone to see as is being done in other countries?
“If the federal government wants to further really drive in their campaign for transparency and accountability, then the whole world needs to know those things that were agreed, written and signed on paper”, he said.
The Egina FPSO vessel for the Egina deepwater oilfield project being executed by Total Upstream Nigeria Limited, arrived late January in Nigeria from South Korea where it was built.
The FPSO, designed for 25 years of operation, has been described as the largest ever installed in Nigeria.
The vessel is currently berthed at the newly-built 500-metre FPSO integration quayside at the SHI-MCI Yard, Ladol Island, Lagos, where the integration of six locally fabricated modules will take place over the next six months.
Egina is the deepest offshore development carried out so far in Nigeria, in water depth of over 1,500 metres and will add 200,000 barrels per day crude oil to Nigeria’s daily oil production.
Buttressing his point, other stakeholders at the event, submitted that there was a need for the Federal Government to work harder to engender greater transparency in the oil and gas sector.
“If the ongoing plans to bring the sector at par with developed countries of the world, to attract the right level of investment and growth for the economy must succeed, transparency has to be at the forefront of government’s agenda then, transparency should be the focus. In fact, this should be the focus of any government vying for elections in 2019”, Project Coordinator for NNRC, Tengi George-Ikoli, said.
The 2017 Benchmarking Exercise Report cataloged developments within the oil and gas sector in the last three years, using the 12 ‘economic principles’ or ‘precepts’ as a tool for assessment governance in the sector.
The precepts consider the decision-making process required to achieve efficient resource management from the foundations of resource governance to effectively administering the revenues accrued for sustainable development.
