Senate, Reps endorse Solewant Group’s $48m pipe-coating plants

The $48 million pipe-coating plants of Solewant Group have received the Senate and House of Representatives Committees’ endorsement  as standard model under the Nigerian Content Oil and Gas Industry Content Development ( NOGICD) Act for  domestication of works previously being executed outside the country  by projects owners.

The NOGICD Act signed by former President Goodluck Jonathan on April 22, 2010, is designed to enhance the level of participation of Nigerians and Nigerian companies in the country’s oil and gas industry.

Highlight of the visit was  tour of the facilities of Solewant Group by the Senate and House of Representatives Committee on Local Content. The facilities  inspected  by  the delegates included, anti-corrosion pipe-coating plant and concrete weight coating plant. Others include Solewant field joint mobile coating equipment as well as the state of the art laboratory.

Chairman Senate Committee on Local Content, Senator Adeola Solomon, who led the delegation during the visit,  said the Senate and House of Representatives Committees are satisfied with the standard of facilities at the pipe-coating plant of Solewant Group.

He noted during interaction with journalists  during the visit to the  pipe-coating plant centre that the tour has helped to confirm the  competence of  Solewant Group as an indigenous  company, that it is  truly 100 per cent Nigerian Content-compliant and not a commissioned agent.

“With the huge investment in modern facilities under local content requirement in each plant visited and local manpower, the  assurance we are giving to them today is  that we are with them all the way,” the Local Content Committee Chairman assured.

Adeola disclosed that the government needed to support Solewant  to sustain service delivery considering huge investment in ant-corrosion plant with over 250 Nigerian staff members fully skilled in their employment.

“We are here today on a fact finding visit, to access their competence and with what  we have seen , the  allegations or claims that the company lacks the capacity to carry out its Local Content obligation are false,” the senator added.

The Senator promised that the upper legislative chamber would amend the Local Content Act to accommodate other sectors such as, construction, Information Communication Technology(ICT) ,Communication and even technology to the benefit of Nigerians.

“As far as we are concerned with Solewant, we are satisfied with what we saw today. Even for those Nigerian companies who cannot meet up with the provision of the Local  Content Law, they should upgrade their equipment to meet up with the guideline of the NOGICD Act and as for us in the National Assembly, we will continue to  give them the needed support,” Sen Solomon  said.

Also speaking during the visit, the Chairman House Committee on Local Content, Federal House of Representatives, Hon Emmanuel Ekon described Solewant as pride of local content  in Nigeria. According to him, the delegation is satisfied with what they saw. “I started something in the House of Representatives to amend the Local Content Act to cover other areas such as construction and communication. The process is on course, so there is no reason why Nigerian Government will go to China to borrow money to fund Local Content. We shall therefore expand the Act to accommodate other sectors so that the IOCs will not continue to dominate Nigerian Companies,” the lawmaker explained.

Earlier in his speech, the Managing Director/CEO of Solewant  Group, Solomon Ewanehi, described the company as a product of local content, assuring that the world-class facilities the Senate  and Federal House of Representative Committees on Local Content have seen will be sustained.

He said: “We are determined and very focused in the provision of the state-of-the-art pipe/metals coating solutions to oil and gas industry. Solewant is work-in-progress and we are moving on as you all will agree with me that the high operations and the speed of our concrete weight coating plant centre is a further testimony of our value creation to the industry. We are pipe/metals coating company and we will continue to deliver quality projects to the country and beyond.”

Ewenahi said the company is planning to mill  and coat pipes  for the industry  in the next couple of months. This, he said will be a lot of value addition to the needs of the  Nigerian oil and gas industry.” , he assured.