Stringent Business conditions scare us from fellow African Nations – Bicens COO

Engr. Paul Ejeh Agbo is the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Bicens Resources Limited, one of Nigeria’s notable indigenous oil and gas servicing companies. In this interview with Yange Ikyaa, he spoke extensively about the successes of his company in terms of project development and delivery, as well as the company’s current efforts to spread its tentacles into other African nations. He however lamented that stringent business conditions imposed by certain African nations are unrealistic and
continue to scare investors from expanding their operations from one country into another across the continent. Excerpts:

Could you tell us a little about your company in terms of how you started and what exactly your company does?

We are an indigenous oil and gas servicing company; we are into well services, as well as productions and we are also into engineering, procurement, construction, installation and commissioning. Our head office is located in Warri, Delta State.

Currently, we have three ongoing contracts running with OML 30, at Heritage Energy and Operational Services, and they involve maintenance of a flow station, perimeter fencing of all the wellheads in Area A and B, and also the pigging of the entire infield facility, that is pipeline cleaning and pigging of the OML 30 facility.

About other things that we do, we are also into procurement and we have technical partnership with TechnipFMC and Emmerson.

How long have you been in operation as a company?

Okay, Bicens Resources Limited was actually incorporated in 2016 as a company, and since then, we have participated in emergency rig repairs; we’ve actually built compressor shelters for Platinum Petroleum as part of the OB 3 Project, we’ve also constructed and built fire-water systems for Frigoglass Company, that is the Beta Glass Group. Then, as sub-contractors before incorporation, some of the activities we embarked on included the Escravos Gas Project Phase 3, where we worked as sub-contractors to Hyundai Heavy Industries.

Before getting into this position as Chief Operating Officer, what was your previous record in the industry?

My previous record will take me out of Bicens and I would say that, as an engineering graduate, I actually started from the bottom of the ladder. The first job I had after waiting for a white collar job for two years, post-graduation, was to work as a helper in an offshore location under Texaco Overseas, now Chevron Nigeria Limited.

Three months after that, I got an engineering appointment as a QAQC Assistant with Egmont Engineering and Construction Services, and I grew up to be a QAQC Manager. Then, thereafter, I did some professional examinations and then diversified into project engineering.

Part of the projects I actually handled included the mechanical installation of steel structures at the EGTL Project, and also the construction of 30 million cubic feet gas plant for Platinum Petroleum. Then, I also laid a 48-kilometer OML 38 Line terminating at Okpai Agip Gas Uplift in Kwale. This was done with Platinum Petroleum.

I also constructed the early production facilities for Pillar Oil in their Phase 2 construction. Then, we also maintained systematic air compressors for some other clients. In addition, I built precision steel tanks with the capacity of 20,000 liters each for Chevron Nigeria Limited, as well as fuel common custody transfer facility at Akwa Ibom for Frontier Universal and Network, where these three different companies had to come together to export their crude oil through ExxonMobil. It is actually similar to the group gathering facility that we constructed in collaboration with Kakasa at Umusadege Area for Midwestern and Mat Resources Limited, where Platinum, Energia and the rest bridge together and export through Agip at Okpai.

You made mention of some projects, either current or upcoming, one of which is the reason you may be going to Abuja in just a few days’ time; so, what is this very project about?

The reason why I may be in Abuja next week is to seek an alternative bridging facility for some injectors, for which we are seeking approval from NNPC, and I have been invited for the technical and commercial or financial defense. It is actually something that we have been following up for about three years now, and we have been able to come this far. But, currently at Bicens, our ongoing projects are the facility maintenance of Kokori, as well as a couple of other projects.

How has Bicens been coping with the competition among industry peers?

The Nigerian energy sector goes beyond just oil and gas, but extends into power generation, distribution and all of that, and wide enough for so many “birds” to fly in. One of the bureaucratic bottlenecks we see in the country is regulatory demands and, in as much as they are compulsory and important, the conditionalities to meet it are actually stringent for indigenous contractors to meet.

However, over the years, Bicens Resources Limited has been able to build capacity to meet and exceed all these requirements. As I speak, and looking at the short period since the incorporation of the company, we have professional affiliations such that we are registered with the Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria (COREN), we are registered with the Institute of Safety Professionals of Nigeria as a company, we are registered with IADC and we are almost IMS certified; that is IMS ISO 9001:2015 and ISO 45:2001, that is integrated management system, we are also there as an indigenous company.

So, with all this, I still believe that the Nigerian market has a long way to go viz-a-viz tenders and all that, because most of these tenders as you see them are designed to normally show more belief in big time contractors with international connections. For the Escravos Gas Project Phase 3 and the Escravos Gas Development Project, one of the main indices that worked so much in favour of Nigerian content was the empowerment of the catchment communities; you see a lot of indigenous communities coming on and they were on hand. Despite the fact that the contract was given to Southern Gas Constructors and also to Hyundai Heavy Industries, most of the work they had to do was under indigenous sub-contractors.

Then, when you look at the Egina Project, there are a lot of sub-contractors like LADOL and many others. For instance, we worked under Samsung Heavy Industries to deliver these projects and, believe me, the Nigerian industry has the capacity to do such.

 I did mention some facilities which I constructed from the scratch to completion and commissioning, and this, we did without expatriates; all with indigenous contractors, indigenous knowledge, and indigenous engineers. From front-end design to basic engineering design, to fabrication, construction, and also execution was done by indigenous engineers.

So, I think that another sector of our economy that is actually affected by brain drain is the engineering sector because it may amaze you when you go to places like Bahrain, Oman and many other nations. Like I will give you an example, for the Shell Gas to Liquid Project in Qatar, 75 per cent of the welders came from Nigeria, and the list keeps going on and on.

So, as much as we have our bureaucratic bottlenecks, I believe that Nigeria has come of age. Another thing about which I will beg to digress is that, for me, part of the networking I did with some foreign companies, especially from Ghana, they are saying that partners should come and invest, but we are also aware of the news that our Igbo brothers there in the commerce sector are having their businesses shut down.

It has been reported that the Ghanaian government will tell you that before you register a company, you must bring an equity of a million dollars, and if you convert that to the naira, you are looking at over half a billion naira, so it’s not so friendly. So, I asked, how can we collaborate under such policies in place?

Therefore, when they talk of African content, I really wonder and I worry about the reality and sustainability of such an agenda under very discouraging policy circumstances.  

How supportive is your company to women professionals?

As for women in engineering and in oil and gas, as I was telling their President, these projects I mentioned that are being handled by Bicens now, each of them has a female project engineer; and I can show you mails, I can show you messages concerning this, and most of them were straight from school; people I picked up and nurtured, and they are handling the projects and we have no problems.

I have spoken with some delegations here at the conference, some from Uganda, Senegal, Gambia, even from Sierra Leone, and they all said that they look up to Nigeria from where companies come to do projects in their own countries; how is Bicens trying to achieve this, despite the peculiar challenge that you pointed out about Ghana?

We have projects where we’ve gone beyond the commercial stage and only about a couple of weeks ago, we concluded negotiations on discounting our price to the United Nations on electricity projects in Kabinda, that is in the Democratic Republic of Congo. We have also made some tenders at Equatorial Guinea Petroleum Company, but what we are skeptical about are the demands from the local collaborating companies in those African nations; we are very weary of that.

For example, in Kabinda, we are the ones bringing the finance, bringing our resources, both material and financial, but they are asking for 75 per cent equity; that is not realistic. So, in scenarios like that, it scares us away from other African countries. If all the delegates here could actually ask for a verifiable backing of their government in terms of their policies and approvals, it would be wonderful. But I think, in my own perception, I could be wrong, that whatever they are saying is just for the benefit of the exhibition and conference.

Let’s look at the realities on ground and the facts like that. If you verify companies from any one country that actually have projects going on in other African countries, if you look at them carefully by investigation, they have another bigger company, either from China or from Europe that is fronting the project for them at that place. But company to company, country to country, it is almost impossible. So, I begin to wonder, from the commercial point, what is the African Union doing; what is ECOWAS doing, especially with the African Continental Free Trade Agreement in place?

So, there is a lot of work that I will call on our policymakers and leaders to look at in that aspect.