TheCable

The federal government has vowed to revive the Kaztec Engineering fabrication yard after six years of inactivity.

Magnus Abe, member of the board of Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), visited the Kaztec facility in Lagos for an inspection tour on Saturday.

The fabrication yard was established in 2012 as part of the contracts awarded by Addax Petroleum to provide support services for the oil and gas sector.

In 2015, Addax ran into tax and audit issues with the federal government thereby declaring a force majeure and suspended activities at the fabrication yard.

According to Abe, President Muhammadu Buhari set up an inter-ministerial committee to assess and recommend ways to assist the moribund facility.

He explained that before the force majeure, Kaztec had spent over $600 million to build the yard, import materials and employed 3,000 direct workers with over 10,000 axillary dependant on this contract.

“This facility was projected to save the country and also help the government generate income value of over $33 billion,” he said.

“The project is for the bringing of over 90 million barrels of crude that belongs to this country that is stuck as a result of this force majeure. We also have millions of dollars in equipment, services and contracts that have collapsed as a result of that.

“I think it is clear that what has happened here is a national tragedy in so many ways, not only in the economy but very negative at a time where we are trying to save foreign exchange from every means possible.

“Everybody is affected by it—the bank, workers, the capacity of the Nigerian economy to expand and also incorporate new technologies in terms of technology transfer is also affected by the collapse of this project.

“I think Nigerians should be grateful to the president for this initiative because this is a situation that has gone over six years and nothing has been done about it until this intervention by the presidential committee.

“The work of this committee is to make recommendations to Mr president as to how we can mitigate the losses that have occurred here and how we can help this facility bounce back.”

In his remarks, Mike Simpson, director of engineering at Kaztec, said the most critical part of the yard for repair is multifaceted due to the amount of years lost.

Simpson said it will take a minimum of three months for the yard to be revitalised.