By Clara NWACHUKWU
Indigenous oil and gas service company, GEMS Global Resources Nigeria Limited, has called on the Nigerian Content Management Board, NCMB, to thoroughly scrutinise the competence of Nigerian companies bidding for jobs in the industry.

The company argued that technical capacity is a major weakness among Nigerian companies, and an area the NCMB should beef up skills.

The Business Development Manager, GEMS Global, Mr. Tunde Alabi, in an exclusive chat with Vanguard Newspapers during the just concluded Offshore West Africa, OWA 2012, noted that many indigenous companies were still struggling to acquire the requisite technical competence to compete effectively in the industry.

The Nigerian Content Act 2010, was enacted to give Nigerian companies more opportunities to participate in oil and gas projects to add greater value for Nigerians while also increasing the industry’s contributions to the country’s Gross Domestic Product, GDP.

He also cited funding as another major challenge faced by indigenous operators, particularly those engaged in specialised services like GEMS.

He elaborated, “GEMS is a survey company, we are into geotechnical and geophysical services, so it has been challenging because we operate in a specialised category that needs a lot of capital investment.

“In our kind of job you need vessels to do them; vessels are capital intensive. A good geotechnical vessel will cost between $15 and 20 million, and most Nigerian banks are not ready to invest in an industry that they don’t quite know much about. It’s not that they don’t have the money but they don’t really know about the sector.”

Alabi revealed that in such instances, the company’s technical partners, GEMS International Group Companies, came to the rescue, which has made the job worthwhile.

In view of its brilliant execution of projects, since 2003, when GEMS came to Nigeria, the global group has seen good returns on their investment to continue to justify greater investments.

He said that such confidence from the technical partners is one of the high points for the company, which has since expanded from very humble beginnings to become very big to become the number two company in its area of specialisation.

Furthermore, he said the company now owns a number of facilities including “a cooperate head office in Lagos, got our fabrication yard in Apapa, and we have got a mobilisation site in Port-Harcourt.”

He argued that GEMS is a truly indigenous company, one of the big advocates of the local content policy, adding that part of the understanding between it and its technical partners is on technology transfer through constant training of Nigerians to take charge and leverage on the local content law.

“This has helped our business because now we know that as a fully Nigerian company, we are now being challenged to be more technically competent, and to really take charge of the industry as it were. Instead of leveraging more on our technical partners, we encourage them to do a technological transfer to Nigeria, so that when we win jobs we don’t have to call upon them, we call on our Nigerian crew to execute the job so that the investment is retained here and help to develop the country,” he added.

Going forward, Alabi said he expected more Nigerian companies to also take up the challenge of the local content development and stopped cutting corners. “I want to see companies look more ahead into the future. I don’t want a Nigerian company that will come around do a job and realize a profit of let’s say $500,000 or $ million and they will go all about throwing parties all around.”