By Nnenna Ezeah
Chevron Nigeria Limited, CNL has said that its Escravos Gas-to-Liquids, EGTL Project completed the first half of 2011 with no lost time injury, no security incident, no industrial relations incident and no regulatory compliance violation.

For a project the size and complexity of EGTL with a workforce of over 10,000 people, a compact construction site with work activities going on simultaneously at multilayered elevations, these achievements are truly world class and exemplary, the company asserted.

EGTL Deputy Project Manager, Mr. Daniel Ashade, noted that the second quarter of 2011 was a period of robust stakeholder engagements, especially with regulatory compliance agencies and the National Petroleum Investment Management Services, NAPIMS, a subsidiary of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC.

According to him, quarterly management meetings were held with NNPC-NAPIMS and the Department of Petroleum Resources, DPR.

“Both agencies commended the project for its stellar safety performance, the construction progress and its demonstrated commitment to deepen local capacity development and community empowerment.

They also commended the project for its innovative model of partnering local community contractors, LCCs with international construction companies, giving the LCCs substantial work to execute and leaning forward to support the LCCs to acquire vital construction equipment,” he said.

By the end of June 2011, construction reached 68.77% complete with the overall Engineering, Procurement and Construction progress at 75.9% complete. On the logistics front, over 1,500 barge loads of equipment, construction materials and Food supplies have been transported from Warri through the Delta creeks to Escravos to meet construction needs.

The Escravos and Forcardos rivers and Chanomi creeks hitherto believed as high risk have been proved by the EGTL project to be secure when community stakeholders are properly engaged.

According to Ashade, while the project’s overall performance in 2nd quarter 2011 is great, there exist some challenges in some areas; schedule risks have been identified in piping installation where erection of small bore piping and hydro test is behind the targets. Tanks erection is also behind schedule with productivity in the tank area the weakest across the project. These risks are being addressed with recovery actions underway.

The project is making positive strides in the areas of structural steel erection, electrical cable pulling and ramping up in insulation and instrumentation. All four diesel power generators were successfully started up in June, 2011.

The project is also making good progress towards readiness for the operations phase. Action items from the Operations Readiness Review Stage lA (ORRIA) workshop have been completed and closed out. How the EGTL operations integrate into the existing Chevron Nigeria Limited’s operations and the Chevron Nigeria/MidAfrica Strategic Business Unit’s Operational Excellence Management Systems, OEMS is being addressed.

Operators accelerated training programmes are underway in the United States of America and South Africa. Maintenance accelerated training programme has been defined and endorsed. Preparation of commissioning procedures remains on track to meet the ready for commissioning dates of the various units of the plant. Excellent advances have been made in pre-commissioning support by Operations.

In the coming months, as construction progress attains 70% completion, the site will transition to completion teams focusing on system and sub-unit progress and work list to complete. The project will also be focusing on mobilizing and demobilizing to high grade crews and brings on crafts for new open work fronts. On materials, the focus will be on shorts, damages, etc, to feed system and sub-unit completions.

“We are excited as we look forward to beginning to complete and sequentially bring online the various systems and sub-units of the plant and transition to Simultaneous Operations mode,” Ashade said.