Royal Niger floats $24m umbilical manufacturing plant in Lagos, Port Harcourt

An indigenous oil and gas service firm, Royal Niger Emerging Technologies has commenced arrangement for full integration of umbilical production in-country, to save the nation’s huge capital flight.

Subsea intervention umbilicals are used for offshore drilling or workover activities. They are deployed on the seabed to supply necessary control, energy and chemicals into the production stream.

The Managing Director, Royal Niger, Anthony Okolo, in a chat with The Guardian after a facility tour of the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB) in Badagry, said the project is poised to lift the local input in the hydrocarbon sector has reached advanced stage and scheduled to be completed in the last quarter 2016.

According to him, the first phase was a total investment of about $6 million, which included the acquisition of the space in Port Harcourt, the fitting of the facilities, upgrade of the existing facilities and the equipment purchased as well as the constant training in and outside the country.

The second phase, he added would be an $18 million investment, which include the factory and the facilities around it, excluding the jetty.

The jetty will be able to carry loads of about 30 tonnes per sq metre in the fist phase, which is subject to upgrade in the second phase.

Okolo, who noted that the facility would take care of repair works, servicing, integration and assembly of umbilical in the country, said there are at least 12 kilometres of umbilicals that are repaired in Nigeria yearly which were hitherto taken oversees as capital flight.

He said: “We have made substantial progress on the facility, while we give priority to other facilities around us like the access road and a jetty located at the base of the development at Angel park, Ago Ajo.

“We have done the foundation flop which is capable of withstanding 35 tones per sq metre load. We are very pleased to announce that we have completed our phase one project which is the establishment of assembly and integration facilities. We have already performed work at one of the facilities in Port Harcourt.

“The capability that we have achieved is a mobile container which will contain the equipment for assembly, integration and testing of any type of umbilical. Since we established that we have gone ahead to work for at least two major international oil companies. We were involved in one of the recent development in Lagos.

“We are looking to make the operators meet the local content law by complying with the law and complete their umbilical in Nigeria.

The project will save huge cost for companies in Nigeria, and we are able to reduce cost in the supply and assembly of umbilical.”

He explained that “majority of the cost in umbilical is the logistics, and what we have done was to bring in the different elements from different manufacturers, pay a lesser duty because the equipments will be coming into the country as components rather than finished product and then be able to assemble with a much cheaper Nigerian workforce. These cost savings will be about 20 per cent of the cost of the finished umbilical.”