Nationwide fuel scarcity looms as marketers groan over importation

Nigerians may be thrown into a fresh round of acute fuel shortage, Major Oil Marketers Association of Nigeria (MOMAN) said on Thursday declaring that this would be triggered by refusal of the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) in releasing the approval for the first quarter fuel importation.

MOMAN said this through its Executive Secretary Obafemi Olawore in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN).

Members of the association, Olawore said, were now on the edge over the inability of the PPPRA to release the importation approval.

“If we don’t get approval on time, it will affect our ability to import products and this will in turn delay distribution of products nationwide.

“The management of PPPRA should release allocations immediately to avoid products scarcity in the country,” he said.

JDR nets deal for Total’s Egina field

UK services player JDR Control Systems has scooped a contract to provide umbilicals and reels for Total’s giant Egina field development off Nigeria.

The Cambridgeshire-based outfit will design and manufacture 20 kilometres of umbilicals and nine reelers for the intervention workover control system at Egina.

Delivery is set for the middle of the year with design and manufacture in the UK.

Earlier this week, Nigeria’s Aveon Offshore won a subsea structures fabrication contract from FMC for Egina. Aveon will supply more than 5000 tonnes of subsea structures which will be fabricated at its yard in Rumuolumeni, near Port Harcourt.

Egina lies about 150 kilometres off the coast of Nigeria within OML 130 in a water depth of up to 1750 metres. First oil is expected in 2017.

South Korean shipyard Samsung Heavy Industries is supplying the $3 billion floating production, storage and offloading unit for the project. It is designed to handle 200,000 barrels per day of oil and 160 million cubic feet per day of gas.

Total operates the field with a 24% interest and is partnered by China National Offshore Oil Corporation (45%), Petrobras (16%), Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (10%) and Sapetro (5%).

Oil coys’ divestment may lead to massive job cuts

Two multinational oil companies in Nigeria are on the verge of divesting their assets in the nation’s oil-rich Niger Delta area, Daily Trust can report.

But the exercise would leave a bitter taste in the industry as both companies would sack half of their workforce in the country in order to execute the divestment programme.

It was gathered that each of the companies has about 8,000 personnel in its employ, meaning that same figure of workers would be jobless in a few months when the programme is fully implemented.

A source told our correspondent that the companies held discussions with the unions in the oil and gas sector penultimate week but it was inconclusive.

It was gathered that the discussions resumed but the companies were said to have insisted on laying off the workers as part of their asset divestment programme.

The oil unions were said to have been disoriented about the development since they couldn’t get enough capital to buy the assets of the companies in order to save the jobs of their members in the companies.

It was gathered that the planned divestment of assets is not unconnected to the rising incidence of oil theft and harsh business environment in the sector, partly caused by the non-passage of the Petroleum Industry Bill before the National Assembly.
Zonal chairman of the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN), Reverend Folusho Oginni, confirmed that his union is making frantic effort to ward off the mass sack of workers.

He blamed the federal government for the wave of divestment of assets by multinational oil companies in the country as, according to him, it has failed to evolve robust policies in the oil and gas sector as well as create enabling environment for investment to thrive.

Uganda set to sign pact with Tullow to allow for oil production

Uganda has completed negotiations with Britain’s Tullow Oil and its partners and will soon sign an agreement that could pave the way for the start of crude production.

East Africa’s third-largest economy struck hydrocarbon deposits in the Albertine rift basin but commercial production has been delayed and is not expected until 2016 at the earliest.

In a speech at a private function for Tullow late on Thursday and seen by Reuters on Friday, energy minister Irene Muloni said the government would shortly sign the memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Tullow and its partners, France’s Total and China’s CNOOC.

Developing Uganda’s oil fields and building the required infrastructure would cost between $15 billion and $22 billion, although there were plans to try to reduce that, Muloni said.

EMGS and Shell sign global agreement

Electromagnetic Geoservices (EMGS) signed a global framework agreement with Shell International Exploration and Production for the provision of consultancy services.

The range of services covered by the agreement includes survey planning/modeling, EM processing, EM inversion, and integrated interpretation.

Friedrich Roth, VP of Imaging & Integration at EMGS, commented: “We are very pleased to strengthen our service offering to Shell with this framework agreement. Shell is one of the most experienced users of EM technology and the agreement further endorses EMGS’s capabilities in processing and interpretation of 3D EM data.”