The Senate Monday began investigation of local content elements and huge cost variations of the over $16 billion Egina Deep-sea oil project.
This is as major stakeholders in the execution of the almost completed offshore oil project have been invited.
This was disclosed Saturday by the Ad-hoc Committee set up to investigate the alleged abuse of local content by the company, led by Senator Solomon Adeola (APC, Lagos West).
Adeola noted that those invited for the five-day investigative hearing include chief executives of Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, the National Petroleum Investment Management Services, NAPIMS, Nigerian Content Monitoring Development Board, NCMDB, Total Upstream Nigeria Limited, SAIPEM Contracting Nigeria Ltd and Samsung Heavy Industry, SHI, among others.
Coincidentally, the Senate investigation is starting on the same day the Floating Production Storage Offloading (FPSO) vessel component of the project constructed over the years by Samsung Heavy Industry (SHI) at Samsung Yard, GOJE, South Korea, will arrived Nigeria, having set sail on October 30, 2017.
A statement by Adeola’s Special Assistant, Kayode Odunaro, said: “The FPSO on arrival will be integrated to locally fabricated and procured components before it set sail back to deep seas to work on the Egina oil field located at Oil Mining Lease (OML) 130.
“The investigative hearing followed the resolution of the Senate on December 4, 2017, to ascertain possible breaches on the Nigerian Oil and Gas Industry Content Development, NOGID, Act 2010 after the project cost being undertaken by Total Upstream Nigeria Limited and initially valued at $6 billion was varied twice to $13 billion and $16.3billion.
“At a pre-hearing meeting of the Senate Ad-Hoc Committee, its chairman Senator Solomon Adeola (APC, Lagos West) had told members of the committee that submissions received so far indicate that the total cost of the almost completed deep-sea oil project expected to produce 200,000 barrels per day may far exceed the varied $16 billion.
”He added that it will be very productive for CEOs of stakeholders’ organisations who know the details of these transactions to personally appear as Nigerians want to know the benefits or otherwise of this project costing Nigeria billions of dollars.”
