The Nigerian Agip Oil Company (NAOC) has said it has initiated a vendor development programme to enhance effective and efficient project delivery by improving the administrative and technical competences of indigenous contractors.
The company said the programme was targeted at small, medium and community contractors, and would address key areas of project delivery and implementation.
The Nigerian Agip Oil Company (NAOC) has said it has initiated a vendor development programme to enhance effective and efficient project delivery by improving the administrative and technical competences of indigenous contractors.
The company said the programme was targeted at small, medium and community contractors, and would address key areas of project delivery and implementation.
Vice-Chairman and Managing Director of NAOC, Mr Massimo Insulla, while declaring open a three-day training workshop for its indigenous contractors in Port Harcourt, said the manpower development initiatives was to bridge the gap between skills requirement and available skills in compliance with the Nigerian Oil and Gas Industry Content Development (NOGICD) Act 2010.
He said the workshop would focus on planning and controlling activity to enable fulfillment of national Content (NC) obligations, understanding and achieving quality and monitoring requirements of National Content Development and Management Board (NCDMB), and controlling cost and working with budget to avoid contract variations which were often times cumbersome to process.
Under the human capacity development, the NAOC Boss said that the company has trained about 76 people chosen from the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB) national data base in various areas like seismic data processing techniques, noise attenuation and use of hydrophones.
Others include metering and calibration; welding/pipe fitting maintenance operations for well heads and valves as well as instrumentation.
In the masters' program, he said the company was currently training about 47 Nigerians in Italy for special programs leading to the award of masters' degree in drilling engineering; production engineering; petroleum engineering and geology.
He also said that later this year, additional 10 students will be sponsored by the company to Eni Corporate University and other institutes in Italy for masters program.
In the aspect of capacity development initiative and marine manpower development, Insulla also said that NAOC was supporting initiatives by some Nigerian companies to domicile marine training of Nigerians in-country.
This, he explained, meant that one of the companies was in the process of bringing in a Class-A Simulator that would be used to simulate practically most Oil and Gas marine activities including subsea operations.
Insulla also said, "This will hopefully reduce offshore marine training cost to some extent thereby giving room for more personnel to be trained," adding that the company had had various engagements with main stakeholders and institutions in the marine industry to enable them finalise the training modalities which would commence very soon.
Other up-coming initiatives for 2014, he said include vendor gap closure opportunities engagement; vendor awareness sensitization and exhibitions.
While listing out these development initiatives which are meant to improve the lot of indigenous contractors, Insulla also pointed out that NAOC was not carrying out these programmes "not as a requirement of the law but we are doing these because we want to get the best we can from the local contractors."
He also challenged the participants at the workshop to give him feedback at the end of the phase three exercise.
In his speech, the Chairman, House of Representatives Committee on Local Content, Hon. Asita O. Asita, advised the indigenous contractors to pull their resources together to grow capacity as they would be better off when they unite.
Asita also advised them to look outside to places like Aberdeen and Milan to get qualified Nigerian engineers and strong business people who could work with them to drive the local content.
The lawmaker also disclosed that there is a fund created by the Nigerian local content law and urged the contractors to put pressure on NCDMB to access the fund "because if you don't we will use it to build skyscrapers."
While expressing concern that the Petroleum Industry Bill has not been passed into law despite efforts by many stakeholders, he also challenged Nigerians "to always remind us that we are not doing our jobs well."
Asita further expressed regrets that the contracting regime in Nigeria is too long and has many human contacts in it, thus giving room for fraud.
In her welcome speech, the General Manager, Nigerian Content Development of NAOC, Mrs Callista Azogu, said the company had observed that some contracts given to local contractors had seen poor performances and therefore the workshop program was to enlighten them with the belief that it would enhance their abilities.
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