Bonga project ll’ yield maximum Nigerian Content benefits-Nwapa

Shell Nigeria Exploration and Production Company’s deep water project-Bonga South West will be executed in a manner that will maximize Nigerian Content benefits, the Executive Secretary, Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board, (NCDMB) Engr. Ernest Nwapa has said.Speaking last week in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State at the workshop organized by the Board and SNEPCO for Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) contractors and indigenous service companies interested in the project, the Executive Secretary said the execution of the multi-billion dollar project must benefit the national economy much more than previous deep water ventures.He acknowledged that the Board was still working  to resolve some of the challenges that arose from the Total Egina deep water project, hence its insistence that diligence must be exercised from the outset with the Bonga South West.He said, “We will apply the lesson learnt from previous exercises to ensure that we do not make the same mistakes.”According to Nwapa, “SNEPCO and EPC contractors will have to go deeper than before. The contractors must understand Nigeria and the job scopes that are possible in-country. They should know that before you take jobs abroad, you must satisfy the local market. Only the things that cannot be done in Nigeria will be allowed to be taken abroad.”He explained that the Nigerian Content policy had been implemented since 2006, starting under the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation and continuing after the passage of the Act, stressing that the eight-year period was sufficient for stakeholders to comply with extant requirements with regards to project execution.The Executive Secretary added that the Board insisted on organizing the workshop because it wanted SNEPCO to carry the Nigerian Content community along in the execution of the project.He regretted that Nigerian service companies had been excluded from the Oil and Gas industry for many years, hence they are easily contented with the limited job scopes they were getting under the implementation of the Nigerian Content Act, adding that more could still be achieved.While commending SNEPCO for its willingness to comply with the Nigerian Content Act, Nwapa said the company’s primary aim was to execute the project speedily, an aspiration which needs to be realized in tandem with Nigerian Content aspirations.Speaking at the opening ceremony, the Director of Monitoring and Evaluation, NCDMB, Mr. Tunde Adelana explained that the purpose of the workshop was to create a platform for interaction between EPC contractors and local service companies interested in the Bonga South West project. He reiterated the Board’s position that most scopes of the project will be executed in-country and only aspects of the job that will be impossible to execute locally will be taken abroad.In his remarks, the Project Manager of Bonga South West,  Mr. Woji Weli stated that the project promoters-SNEPCO and NNPC were targeting to take the final investment decision before the end of 2014 and sought to achieve a tendering cycle of 12 months.He also revealed that the project seeks to achieve first oil by the year 2020.The BSW project is an oil development located about 135 kilometres offshore Nigeria in water depths up to 1400 metres. The development is based on a new hub, with a standalone regional spread-moored Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) unit with nameplate oil processing capacity of 225kbopd and 2.5 MMbbls nominal storage capacity.The subsea network consists of 82 km of subsea pipe-in-pipe flowlines with 4 production loops, 3 water injection lines, a 16 inch x 98 km gas export line, and about 70 km of static and dynamic umbilicals.