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The Senate Ad Hoc Committee on Investigation of Local Content Element on Egina Oil Field and other Related Project has directed the stoppage of further variations on the Total Upstream Nigeria Limited $16.3 Billion Egina Deep Sea Oil Project following the interim report it presented to the Senate.
Disclosing this at a stakeholder meeting to brief on the Senate Resolution to pay consultants to do a ”Value for Money Audit” of the Egina project, Senator Solomon Adeola(APC, Lagos West) the chairman of the committee stated after the huge $2billion variation on the project as contained in the interim report there are proposal for another $1billion variation stressing that there is need to get details explanation of these variations by various sub contractors to Total Upstream Nigeria Limited, the major operator of the project.
He said the audit will last for 16 weeks by consultants paid for by the Senate to ensure independent account instead of such being carried out by NNPC/NAPIMS as required by the contractual agreement adding that over the five year period of the project no audit of any kind has been carried out.
The chairman of the committee also indicates it will communicate the illegal status of a foreigner, one Young Ho Jo, who claim to be the managing director of Samsung Nigeria Limited and has been working in Nigeria for the past two months without fulfilling legal requirements for such as testified by the Nigeria Content Development Monitoring Board (NCMDB) to the Ministry of Interior for possible deportation as an illegal alien.
“The man came to us to say he is the MD of Samsung and his documentation could not be completed because of the breakdown of the machines of NCMDB but the NCMBD wrote to us that their machine had never broken down in the period claimed showing that the man has contravene the Local Content law” Senator Adeola stated.
Mr. Nicolas Terraz, the managing director of Total Upstream Nigeria Limited stated that as the major operator of the project it will continue to assist the committee in its investigations adding that its goal is to deliver the project expected produce 200,000 barrels of crude oil per day while its FPSO have a holding capacity of 2million barrel.
Eng. Gbolahan Okesanya, the representative of NNPC/NAPIMS said that it will ensure that maximum cooperation is given to the audit team of the Senate when it commence work adding that the goal of the audit team tallies with that of NNPC/NAPIMS in its regulation of the oil industry.
