West African Ventures (WAV) Plans Fresh Investment In E&P Services

WEST African Ventures Limited, an indigenous service provider in the upstream sector is set to increase investment in the acquisition of facilities and equipments required for success during international bid exercise for award of services contracts. Mr. Olawale Salako, director, West African Ventures disclosed at the Nigerian Oil and Gas (NOG) 2008 in Abuja recently that the company will continue to make new investment to acquire latest technology required for execution of contracts in its area of specialisation. This, he said became necessary as a result of discrimination against indigenous service providers by multinational exploration and production (E&P) firms over complaints of inadequate capacity. “What we are doing is to improve maintenance of our facilities, acquire new equipment so as to consolidate achievement recorded in the sector despite the challenges posed by multinational firms”, he explained. Salako said that indigenous service providers should be given more opportunities in the upstream sector to realise the aspiration of increasing the contributions of the oil and gas industry to the nation's gross domestic product (GDP) “As at the moment, the percentage of contribution is still very low even though we have invested heavily in our area of specialisation. It will be difficult for the nation to grow, if multinational firms continue to discriminate against indigenous firms in the award of contracts”, he noted.

He disclosed that the company has its own in-house installation and fabrication engineering department operating from its offices in Lagos. Besides, he noted that there is direct access to the sea trucks group's construction yard in Onne, Port Harcourt where the project execution team is located. Both teams consist of experienced managers and engineers and are well balanced mixture between expatriate and local personnel. “At the Onne base, all construction work is being executed and local personnel are trained to the highest standards” he said. He added that the company is capable of executing complex turn-key engineering, procurement, installation and construction (Epic) projects. He added that the company is also engaged in offshore construction of pipelines; jackets and topsides; installation and maintenance; post trenching and commissioning. “West African Ventures is 100 per cent indigenous company serving the on and offshore oil and gas in the sub-region. We have a technical partnership with the Sea Trucks Group which operates a large and versatile fleet of construction vessels, tugs and barges as well as ownership of fabrication facilities”, he told journalists during an “WAV has the capacity to perform post-trenching work with the PRT (pipe, riding, trencher) unit, which is capable of post trenching (remotely controlled) pipelines in the range of eight to 60 inches to a burial depth of six metres. Projects completed by the company for oil firms include Helideck of 110 tonnes (T) built at Onne yard, heave compensation frame after completion with the three buoyancy tanks in 2005; spreader beam; stinger, refurbishment of mooring buoy. Some of the major fabrication equipment acquired recently includes wildan heavy plate bending rolls capable of bending 25 millimetres (mm) plate; Messer griesham multihead CNC controlled profile burner; profile machine capable of profiling pipe and tubular steel up to 38 inches; Lincoln column and boom submerged arc welders among others.

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