As part of the efforts to support the government in the development of local capacity in the Oil and Gas industry, KAZTEC Engineering Limited, a wholly indigenous Oil and Gas service company, is planning to invest $800 million its fabrication yard on the Snake Island in Lagos in order to boost local content development in the sector .
Already, about $600 million has been invested on the project.
The first phase of the project has gulped about $300 million while phase two would take about $450 million.
The workforce is to increase to 1500 at the peak of construction and fabrication exercise in the nearest future.
Marc Robillard, commercial director for KAZTEC Engineering Ltd disclosed this while briefing Patrick Daziba Obah, executive secretary of the Nigerian Content Monitoring Board, NCMDB, who visited the company site on the island for physical siting of what the company is doing.
He told the visiting NCMDB officials that the management plans to build a world-class fabrication yard that would not serve only the interest of the oil and gas industry but other sectors of the economy such as construction industry.
“This visit is a facility visit we were invited by KAZTEC and in our own tradition, whenever we embark on such visitation, we invite the OICs, who sends in their Nigerian content staff to represent them to see such facilities.
Patrick Daziba Obah in an interview after the visitation said that it afforded his organisation to take stocks of the activities of the fabrication company.
He commended KAZTEC for its ability to do what it has been able to do so far to enhance local content development, saying that if it can continue on its current part, it would be a matter of time for such an indigenous company to greatly expand the participation of Nigerian participation in the highly technical petroleum industry.
“With the knowledge the staff have acquired over the years, they have been able to build those things that we saw at the site. With the visitation we now begin to appreciate what Nigerian companies can do in- country. This fabrication yard is a testimony of what Nigerian indigenous companies can do.
What we have witnessed in KAZTEC is a testimony and it means Nigerians can do a lot and meet the world standard in terms of oil and gas industry,” he said.
He appealed to Nigerians that whatever leakages that exist in oil and gas industry should be sealed so that more jobs can be created because a lot of fabrication yards are dying of lack of jobs, “ if we sit down and begin to add some coloration, then of course the situation would remain the same.”
The NCMDB boss stated that what is needed now is to tell people that we have fabrication yards that can build things to world-class specifications.
“But going forward, we must expand the frontiers of the local content to other sectors so that there could be more jobs. For instance, the construction industry make use of structured materials and if they patronise the fabrication yards like this, KAZRTEC and other yards would be very busy.”
He said his agency has always been strict on domiciliation of jobs in Oil and Gas industry.
In his own comment Isreal Nweke, technical assistant to the chairman of the company said that most of the jobs that are regular in the Oil and Gas industry now are very small fabrication items, saying that KAZTEC has not really gotten the big one and if you don’t really need a big yard it just makes sense to go to small yard.
“But with what KAZTEC has on ground and some other kinds of jobs, we should be able to get the necessary patronage that would keep the yard going,” he said.
Olusola Bello
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