Positioned strategically at the entry-point to Lagos harbour, The Lagos Deep Offshore Logistics – LADOL provides a one-stop-shop for multinational industrial and oil and gas companies operating in West Africa. It has become the region’s largest base for rig and vessel repair, LADOL also provides 24/7 operations with a wide range of services and facilities – from cargo handling and inventory management to onsite hotel and recreational facilities. In this brief chat with Orient Energy Review at the just concluded Offshore West Africa Conference and Exhibition in Lagos, Mr. Jide Jadesimi, an Executive Director of the company narrates the successes achieved so far.
We are aware that LADOL has entered into partnership with Samsung Heavy Industries for ship building in Nigeria, can you tell us about that and how many foreigners are working with you right now?
Well LADOL and Samsung Heavy Industries have kicked off full fabrication and construction of ships in Nigeria. Though LADOL went into local fabrication of Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) integration and conversion in 2015, we have gone into ship building after the joint agreement we had with Samsung Heavy Industries. And concerning the number of foreigners we have in our facility, it is a ratio and is never more than 1:10, we have kept this to the absolute minimum, this is something that is carefully negotiated at the tendering face, and the key part is the monitoring during the progression of the project and that is something that I’ll say is very seriously done and adhered to and to make sure that the promises that we made to Nigerians at the inception of the project are actually adhered to and continued throughout the life circle of that project.
You said you already have 5,000 jobs to be created from the project, so from its inception to this very moment, what is the workforce now?
For direct employees, we have 1000 on ground, indirectly you must multiply that by 10 to get the multiplying factor for indirect jobs you get from our suppliers and what have you? We have projects to run for a couple of years and we’ve got a project plan which shows the escalation of the workforce throughout the project as activities begin to pick up.
Looking at the declining price of crude oil, it is affecting the oil majors and these are your clients, is it in anyway going to affect your operation? If your answer is yes, what long term measures have you put in place to cushion such effect?
The crude oil price is declining, that is the reality. For LADOL our business is based on flexibility. So if the oil price is low or high, it doesn’t affect our business module. Our business module is based on flexible oil prices, in fact, in low oil prices just as we have right now, we have an attractive solution, cost saving solutions to the bigger IOCs; when oil was $100 per barrel they were not so concerned with such efficiency. But with what we have, the big IOCs want to do something differently, they want cost saving, they want efficiency and that is what we are providing with the environment that we have in our base and the strategic location of our office facilities allowing for 8 hours turnaround time.
Basically, we want to continue to have the government’s support, without the support of the various government agencies like the NPA, NNPC, NCDMB, we won’t have achieved what we have which is to build upon the initial vision of the founders, who saw that you have to invest ahead of the market. So we need more support from all the parastatals. And we strongly believe in the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari, and this is the platform that we set out to industrialise Nigeria, and we will continue to work towards that.
As a Jetty, is LADOL obeying the Federal government laws?
We obey all laws in the Federal territory of Nigeria.
You mentioned the issue of government support that you need it to succeed are you getting that support from the Nigerian Customs Service, because there is an allegation that you people are operating without approval from the Nigerian Customs Service, how true is that?
Well, we abide with all laws; we are a fully compliant company. In terms of any supposed issue with the Nigerian Customs, I am not aware of that. But of course we have a good working relationship not only with the Nigerian Customs but also with the NPA
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