By Oke Peter
The Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) has unveiled a $15 billion investment in the oil and gas sector in the next five years.
Its Managing Director, Osagie Okunbor, broke the news at the second edition of the Nigerian Oil and Gas Opportunity Fair (NOGOF) organised at the weekend by the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB) in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State.
He said the company was keen at expanding local content in the oil and gas sector.
Okunbor said the proposed $15 billion investment would bring huge benefits to the country and its people in terms of contracts and jobs, among other benefits in line with the theme of NOGOF: “Maximising Oil & Gas Industry for the benefit of the Nigerian people”.
He said: “These remain exciting times for Nigeria as Shell along with its partners will be maturing several projects in support of Nigeria’s growth ambition.
“A cocktail of policies and the active support of government and its agencies like NCDMB have made these investments possible. The industry continues to witness improve cycle times with NCDMB.
“We have an investment portfolio of over $15 billion over the next five years. Shell’s investments will bring huge benefits to the country and its people – contracts, jobs, thus underscoring the theme of this year’s NOGOF.”
Okunbor said that Shell recently announced the Final Investment Decision (FID) on the 300 million (cubic gas per day) Assa North Ohaji (ANOH) gas development project in Imo State.
He said on completion, the project is expected to generate circa 1200MW to power circa 1.2m homes (1MW – 1000homes) by supplying gas into the domestic gas market.
The SPDC chief added: “We also issued Invitation to Tender (ITT) for Bonga South West Aparo (BSWA) and as a shareholder in the NLNG Train 7, we are on track for FID later this year.
“In addition to these, we are also maturing several sizeable projects planned to start within the next five years with 28 projects covering export gas, domestic gas and oil projects spread across deep offshore, shallow water, swamp and land terrains.
“Benchmark for all these projects is to meet and where possible surpass the 70 per cent Nigerian content target set for BSWA.”
He listed other projects as the construction of over 200 wells; 1000 km of flowlines and bulk lines; subsea umbilicals, risers and flowlines (SURF); jackets, platforms, hull and manifolds.
Others are major oil and gas facility modifications and upgrades both onshore and deep water and at least 4 gas compression projects.
He said: “Employment opportunities are huge, not to mention the spin-off in allied services. These projects also offer huge capacity building opportunities in the delivery of Human Capacity Development (HCD) training, increased community content/ participation, in-country fabrication, increased utilisation of Nigerian vessels, re-skilling of Nigerians to take up more roles in shallow and deep-water operations and technology transfer.
“Beyond the project phase, on completion, these projects will offer significant brownfield opportunities in asset maintenance, logistics, among others.”
