*Company powering Nigeria’s sustainable energy security
By Emeka Ugwuanyi
Ralph Waldo Emerson, the great essayist said: “If a man is good at what he does than his neighbours, though he lives in the woods, the world will make beaten path to his door post.” This quote aptly describes the Group Chief Executive Officer of Oilserv Group, Engr. Emeka Okwuosa.
Therefore, it is no wonder when he bagged the prestigious Vanguard Energy Icon of the Year award. His company – Oilserv Limited, has undertaken, competently completed arduous projects in very challenging terrains. These were jobs hitherto and exclusively done by foreign multinational companies. Oilserv Limited has proudly stood out among its contemporaries and this made it easy for Vanguard to select its Group CEO for the award.
The oil and gas industry players endorsed the award as well deserved. To them, Engr. Emeka Okwuosa has undoubtedly proven that knowledge and expertise are not domiciled in any particular region of the world considering his contributions to the growth of Nigeria’s oil and gas industry.
His flagship Company, which is the first in the conglomerate, is the Oilserv Limited – an engineering, procurement, construction, installation and commissioning company (EPCIC). It also undertakes project management, maintenance, and rehabilitation of pipelines and other facilities. It was established in 1992 to close the gap in oil services space and build indigenous capacities and capabilities.
Okwuosa having worked for Schlumberger worldwide in various capacities and different parts of the world, decided to contribute to the development of Nigeria’s economy. Therefore, in 1995, the company began operation and worked exclusively for Shell for the next five years, after which it started working for other International Oil Companies (IOCs) and the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas (N LNG) in maintaining their pipeline transmission systems. It is also instructive to note that at that time, oil services jobs and activities were exclusive preserves of the multinational oil service companies such as Schlumberger, Halliburton, Wilbros, SAIPEM and Baker Hughes, among others.
Over 25 years on, Oilserv Limited has not only become a major brand but an industry leader, underscoring the managerial acumen and doggedness of the man behind it and his team made of thoroughbred professionals. This also underscored the assertion of oil and gas industry operators that knowledge and expertise are not domiciled in any particular region of the world, thus, the deservedness of the award of the Energy Icon of the Year.
Milestones
As a seasoned engineer, Okwuosa ensured Oilserv provided the best onshore and offshore services in oil and gas sector because he returned to Nigeria with the vision of building the country’s capacity in oil and gas technical services.
The company started by building flow lines for Shell and eventually began building trunk lines and pipelines for them, after which it started building facilities like manifold stations, including the largest of such facilities in Nigeria. From there, the company grew to the point where its service delivery covers entire pipelines and flow lines of all sizes.
However, the majority of pipelines, the firm currently constructs are actually gas, rather than oil pipelines, as more and more gas pipelines are being built as distribution systems throughout the country. Currently, the EPC Company has built over 75 pipelines, far exceeding the number that any other indigenous company has done. Oilserv is the only Nigerian company with the capacity to construct 10 pipeline projects simultaneously. It has done several projects for Nigerian companies – private and public.
In addition, it built the Obiafu-Obrikom Oben (OB3) 48-inch diameter pipeline, the largest in Africa. The second is the Ajaokuta-Kaduna-kano pipeline project popularly called AKK gas pipeline project. The AKK project is Trans-Nigeria Gas Pipeline that would deliver gas to states in northern Nigeria, Morocco, and Europe. Besides providing clean energy to businesses, it is a booster to the ongoing global energy transition and will be a major foreign exchange earner for the nation.
In recognition of the enormous contributions of Engr. Emeka Okwuosa through his Companies and Foundation toward Nigeria’s development, President Muhammadu Buhari in 2022 conferred on him a national award in the rank of Commander of the Order of the Niger (CON). This is in addition to the National Productivity Order of Merit Award (NPOM) conferred on him in 2017.
On human capital development, Oilserv runs a training scheme which entails training of young graduates (Graduate Training Scheme (GTS)) and non-graduates (Technical Training Scheme (TTS)) in various fields of operation in the Oil and Gas sector of the economy.
The scope of Graduate training scheme include Project Management, Quality Control/Quality Assurance, Health Safety and Environment (HSE), Human Resources, ICT, Planning/Control and Engineering, among others.
The Technical training scope include but not limited to the following; Automatic welding, Manual welding and fitting, Rigging activities, Basic equipment maintenance/assets training, Horizontal directional drilling operation, operation of heavy duty equipment like excavator, forklift, crane, swamp buggy, side boom, boom truck and back how, among others.
Other subsidiaries of Oilserv Group include – Frazimex Engineering Limited, FrazPower Limited, FrazOil Limited, Ekcel Farms Limited, Crown Energy Limited and EnviFraz Limited. These subsidiaries play strongly in their various sectors of the economy, thus making the Company a unique integrated firm and reference point for its contemporaries. He has a workforce of between 1500 and 2000 people.
The Group has presence in Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, the Benin Republic, and Togo. It has made giant strides in the area of gas development to deliver cleaner fuel to major industrial concerns and other consumers nationwide in line with Nigeria’s Gas Master Plan.
Oilserv Group has been in the forefront of promoting education through the award of scholarship to students not just in the areas where his operations are domiciled. Through the Company’s CSR budget and the Sir Emeka Okwuosa Foundation, he has built roads, contributed to erosion control, provision of potable water, electricity infrastructure, among others to several communities across Nigeria.
Engr. Okwuosa is an advocate of local content development and a great philanthropist. His Foundation built multi-billion naira state-of the-art modern specialist hospital in Oraifite, Anambra State named after his beloved late mother (Dame Irene Nneka Okwuosa Medical Centre) and a four-floor administration/classroom block at the Dame Irene Nneka Okwuosa Memorial convent in Oraifite amongst other notable contributions.
The well-equipped hospital has allowed Nigerians and others to receive medical treatment in-country. Recently, the annual medical outreach sponsored by Sir Emeka Okwuosa Foundation completed the 2022 medical interventions with 24 heart surgeries conducted on 23 desperate Nigerians who were given back their lives in one of the most sophisticated medical procedures in Nigerian history.
The free surgeries, medical consultations, supply of drugs and sundry consumables to ward patients and outpatients were conducted by expert surgeons of the Dame Irene Okwuosa Memorial Hospital with additional support from 45 medical experts coming from the United States and Sweden for the highly specialized operations. The beneficiaries of the heart operations who were chosen patients from nine states of the federation, had approached the hospital with appeals for assistance; and Sir Emeka Okwuosa Foundation intervened with the sponsorship of the procedures which saw the deployment of the up-to-the-minute facilities at the medical centre to desired utilization.
Apart from the 24 open-heart surgeries which were afforded the beneficiaries free of charge, the team of medical experts from Nigeria and Europe also carried out cardiac catheterizations on 12 patients and a Pacemaker Insertion on another patient. This constituted a significant feat that has never been recorded in the history of Nigeria and Africa considering that Nigeria does only 50 in a year but Okwuosa and his team did 24 in 10 days for free. Also, free medical consultation and supply of drugs were afforded to an additional 348 beneficiaries in the outpatient outreach, which concluded on November 10, 2022, in the Oraifite council area of Anambra State.
To the applause and credit of the medical team members who were flown into the country ahead of the exercise, all the cardiac interventions were successfully conducted in record time, minimizing complications associated with protracted operating procedures.
The company spent multi-million naira on medical supplies and protective equipment to Federal and state governments as part of its contribution to fight against COVID-19 pandemic.
Engr. Okwuosa belongs to several professional bodies including Nigerian Society of Engineers, Society of Petroleum Engineers, Institute of Directors (IoD), Petroleum Technology Association of Nigeria (PETAN), Pipeline Professional Association of Nigeria and Nigerian Gas Association, among others.
He is also a Knight of Saint Christopher (KSC) of the Anglican Communion.
