Lagos — Six indigenous oil service companies won drilling jobs worth two billion naira (about US$18 million, at 111 naira to a dollar) from Chevron Nigeria Limited, the company announced in a statement released here recently. It said the awards were made under "contractual arrangements aimed at boosting local content development in the Nigerian oil and gas industry."
The announcemt by Chevron came on the heels of a workshop in Abuja last week that sought ways of increasing the local content and indigenous participation in Nigeria's oil industry.
"I am happy that out of the 14 successul companies evaluated for drilling sercices, six are indigenous companies," the statement quoted Ladi Oke, Chevron's Manager, Drilling, as saying. Oke added that one of the successful foreign companies would sub-contract 30 percent of the service contract to two indigenous companies.
Chevron said in the statement that the six companies were selected through a competitive bid process that involved many foreign competitors, and explained that the contracts "were won on the strength of their individually evaluated technical competence."
Chevron described the awards as "another dividend" from the local content development policy of its joint venture with state-run Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation. Last year, the joint venture released a margianl field to an indigenous oil company, the first such gesture in Nigeria. A marginal field is one whose low production level and increasing costs have rendered unattractive to a multinational company.
The statement gave the names of the successful companies as Relentech, Filco, Drillog Petro-Dynamics, Hexagon Petroservices, Weafri, and Sowsco. It said the scope of their contracts would cover casing and tubing running, filtration, directional drilling, and jar rental services, and cementing.
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At the Abuja workshop, many speakers, including government officials, accused multinational oil companies of favouring foreign firms in the award of contracts, even where local competence existed for the execution of such jobs. As a result, the speakers argued, the oil industry has had minimal impact on the domestic economy, as most of government's expenditure leaves the country in the form of capital flight.
Rilwanu Lukman, Presidential Adviser on Petroleum and Energy, disclosed that government invests over US$5.0 billion annually into the oil sector. He regretted however that "over 90 percent of the yearly expenditure escapes the domestic economy as capital flight through technical services rendered by foreign companies and goods procured outside the country at the expense of indigenous and Nigerian owned companies."
