By Modupe Gbadeyanka
Last Thursday, the Ministry of Petroleum Resources in conjunction with the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB) launched Project100 to provide institutional and financial support to 100 Indigenous oil and gas service companies.
The project targets indigenous companies offering seismic, marine, engineering and drilling services and will provide financial and non-financial as well as technical support and access to market for the beneficiary companies.
Minister of State for Petroleum Resources Dr. Ibe Kachikwu who performed the official launch said he initiated the Project 100 as an oil and gas industry intervention to identify, recognize and nurture wholly owned indigenous Nigerian oil and gas service companies into large scale players that will create high impact in the economy.
He said the process of selecting the beneficiary companies was very clean and transparent.
The NCDMB which is the lead agency tasked to implement the project said world renowned consultant KPMG conducted the selection process.
Executive Secretary of the NCDMB Engr. Simbi Wabote said a lot of evaluation criteria were used to trim the number of companies who applied adding that 60 companies were chosen among thousands of service companies who applied.
Some of the beneficiary companies include Anzor Nigeria Ltd, B2 Oil and Gas Project Ltd, Energeria Ltd, Gemstone Energy Services Ltd, Jite Projekts Ltd and Mafuta Energy Services Ltd.
The NCDMB and the Bank of Industry (BOI) had in 2017 launched a $200 million Intervention Fund for Nigerian companies involved in manufacturing in the oil and gas industry.
Mr Wabote said, however, the Board was finalizing another financing model.
“Within the next couple of months we will launch another financing scheme perhaps without all the bottlenecks that we see today with the BOI and these selected companies will be our focus areas and beneficiaries,” he said.
