Ike Amos
Abuja — Total Exploration and Production Nigeria has announced plans to consolidate on its investments in the deepwater segment of the Nigerian petroleum industry.
Speaking during a visit to the Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, in Abuja, Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of Total E&P Nigeria, Mr. Mike Sangster, disclosed that this became necessary especially as the company had been very active in the deep offshore.
According to him, the last three Floating, Production, Storage and Offloading, FPSO, vessels developed in Nigeria over the last couple of years, had been built by Total along with its partner, the NNPC.
Sangster said, “Total, NNPC and our partners have delivered the last three deep offshore projects in Nigeria, namely Akpo in 2009, Usan in 2012 and Egina in 2018.
“Egina started production in December 2018 and is adding 200,000 barrels of oil per day to Nigeria’s production.”
He added that a significant milestone was achieved with the Egina project as Egina recorded 77 percent of Nigerian Content being the first Deepwater project to have both 100 pet cent of the management and project team in Nigeria.
“The FPSO is the first in both Nigeria and Africa, to have six modules integrated in-country. The project developed significant in-country capacity for Nigerians,” he stated.
Sangster further expressed confidence in the Nigerian petroleum industry, stating that that was the major reason while the company was still operating and producing onshore, offshore and Deepwater.
According to him, Total is the only international oil company still operating across the entire energy value chain in Nigeria, the upstream, Liquefied Natural Gas, LNG, and downstream segment.
In the downstream, he said, “Total has 580 Service Stations across the whole country. We are in every part of Nigeria. In addition to marketing of petroleum products, our Bonjour shops located in most stations provide value-adding services like car wash and care-care products, free tire checks/gauging, among others.
“We are also project partner for a 100 megawatts, MW, solar Independent Power Project, IPP in Katsina State, as well as the solarization of service stations.”
Furthermore, he stated that the company hopes to build on recent progress in many areas such as cash call arrears and its longstanding partnership with the NNPC among others.
“Nigeria is known to have great quality of rocks, and earlier this year in a visit to the Vice President and immediate past Group Managing Director of NNPC, TOTAL Chief Executive Officer, Patrick Pouyanne had indicated the group’s readiness to explore for more oil and gas if granted exploration licenses by the Nigerian government,” Sangster declared.
