There are serious concerns that the Egina oil field start up may further experience delay due to seeming challenges facing the company which was awarded the $3.3 billion Egina Floating, Production, Storage and Offloading (FPSO) project, the SAMSUNG Heavy Industries (SHI).
The company flagged off the facility in Lagos last week, two years behind schedule and LEADERSHIP learnt that the SHI had submitted a $300 million cost variation to the investment arm of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), the National Petroleum Investment Management Services (NAPIMS), for the engineering work of the Egina FPSO project.
The company is not certain when it is going to set up a yard in Bayelsa and also admitted it still has not trained any welder or fitter for the execution of the Nigerian content component of the work, but was planning to do so in the future.
Speaking at the ceremony, the group general manager of the NAPIMS, Mr Jonathan Okehs, noted that the project which is set to hire over 1,500 welders would also create over 50,000 employment through direct and indirect jobs.
Source : Leadership