Daily Independent Online.
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Thursday, June 17, 2004.
Agbami, Aparo to improve local content
By Charles Okonji
Snr Business Correspondent, Lagos
ChevronTexaco Nigeria Limited’s Agbami, Nsiko
and Aparo oil fields, would help to improve the local content in the oil
industry. This is besides the fact that the company’s deepwater
operations would be of economic significance to Nigeria.
The company’s General Manager and Head, Nigeria and Mid-Africa Strategic Business
Unit’s Deepwater Venture, Mr. Donald MacDonald, also disclosed that the
company planned not only to recruit and train, but also to boost the local
content and sustainable development as the key elements in deepwater programme.
He said the firm’s plan was to recruit and
train Nigerian professionals to manage and operate its deepwater assets,
stating that ChevronTexaco was working to grow local capabilities in order to
meet the demand of the future.
MacDonald said the company’s recent efforts had
been “very proactive in building local technical capabilities,”
stressing that it had achieved it through bringing in major aspects of the
deepwater activities in Lagos and training its workers locally along with its
Houston Deepwater Organisation.
He said: “Fast-forward five years and you will
see our deepwater organisation to be predominantly staffed by nationals. There
are a lot of new skills to be acquired and technologies to be mastered in a
short period of time, but we believe we have the people in the organisation to
make it all happen.”
MacDonald explained that ChevronTexaco got 10
licences in Nigeria and one in Equatorial Guinea, which included OPL 250, OPL
214, OPL 318 and OPL 249. The company drilled the Aparo discovery well on OPL
213 in late 2001. He stated that
as the company moved in the Agbami development, there would be more employment.
Besides, as the other discoveries like Nsiko comes in, there would be
significant increase in human resources, he added.
Agbami field ranked the largest single find to date
in West Africa, spanning an area of 45,000 square kilometres. The Agbami-2
appraisal well was drilled in 4,800 feet of water to a total depth of 15,683
feet in 1999. The well, which encountered 534 feet of pay in five separate
oil-bearing zones, flowed at a maximum rate of 10,000 barrels per day. The testing of Agbami-2 appraisal will
confirm that its structure is a giant discovery with recoverable reserves of about one billion barrels
of oil.
