Tender Assisted Swamp Barges
OGDC is one of those few companies that buck a trend in doing so distance themselves from the rest of the pack. The company intends to fill a need from the influx of independents that are moving into the inland waters of West Africa as a result of major operators realising their concessions.
The company only recently formed has already carried out extensive work on the complete refurbishments on two tender assisted swamp barges the searex 6 and searex 12 at their facilities in Nigeria and Ghana respectively. Following the successful competition of these two projects The companies founder members Mr John Holland and George Irvine have identified that there is a void in the tender assisted swamp barge market and have entered into an ‘Alliance Agreement’ with PSC Tema Shipyard a subsidiary of Boustead Holdings Berhad (Boustead) one of Malaysia’s oldest diversified conglomerates was founded in 1828 and over the last 178 years, it has grown to comprise more than 80 listed and non listed subsidiaries and associate companies.
The purpose of this Alliance is for OGDC with the technical and financial support of the Boustead group is to provide the facility to deliver full turnkey delivery of tender assisted swamp barges to fulfil the need for the Gulf of Gunniea. The medium to long term vision will be to totally EPIC these drilling units in Ghana but initially for the immediate short term it is expected to design and assemble most of the larger sections at BHIC facility in Malaysia but to complete the final stages and handover to the client from their facility in Tema which is located in Ghana.
Considering the present age of the existing tender assisted units that are operating in especially Nigeria were built over twenty years ago and will not include the new technologies that will be incorporated in the new innovative design.
One of the reasons we got into this market was because as mentioned above the majority of the units in this segment average 27 years old so by the process of natural attrition some new construction has to come to the market place at some point. In short the driving forces behind OGDC are the aging fleet and the desire to bring some new technology into the market place. Our focus has been to add value for operators by reducing operational risk and downtime through improved methods and latest technology.
The bottom line is we want to be low cost high value producer for our operators Mr Irvine continued we have been told by our respective clients that the quality and depth of management and drilling expertise is uncommon especially by a small young company like yours and they really enjoy picking up the phone and being able to talk to the owners.
It is proposed that the new builds would be 2000hp (however this can be accommodated to individual client requirements, conventional drilling barge featuring circular mud tanks and high capacity cranes and full electronic monitoring of the drilling operations it will be also be designed with a transit daft of two metres or less. The mud handling and processing system will consist of circular tanks to aid in better mixing capabilities. The tanks eliminate the build in corners of square tanks and they create better shearing capabilities.
The crane capacity will be increased in order to accommodate the heaviest project lift during all phases of the drilling operations. Virtually any of the parameters of the barge can be monitored by the system. The monitoring will be stored electronically and will provide the client with a database at the competition of the well. Also the information can be monitored in real-time from virtually any location via satellite connection to an internet website. This allows the customer to log in into the rig system thus reducing the cost of communications to the customer.
OGDC puts a very high regard on local content and that not only means supplying drilling services locally for the region but benefiting the local economy as well. ON OGDC previous projects in West Africa the activities resulted in a payroll of approximately $1million. The reactivation of the Searex 12 in Nigeria including subcontractors was estimated at $11million and the searex 6 reactivation which took place in Cameroon / Ghana was $7.8million.
The reception to this concept by indigenous operators in West Africa has been tremendous and by harnessing new technologies and the existing proven track record of our technical partners it is envisaged that we will be able to deliver one tender assisted unit per annum. We also have identified the constant challenges especially in the long lead procurement items such as generators but have gone out via our procurement division and utilised new equipment that is certified to an international standard and can be provided within our strict project schedules.
