Captain Temilola
Okesanjo is the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the newly
established NLNG Ship Management Limited (NSML). In this interview with
Vanguard he spoke on the challenges of operating shipping activities in the
Nigerian waters. Excerpts
WHAT informed NLNG to
establish a shipping firm?
In my previous role I had the opportunity of kick-starting
the shipping activities of Nigerian LNG in 1999, developing all it took to
commence NLNG Shipping Operations at the inception of Cargo Production in
September, 1999. I led major shipping activities and developments in NLNG, from
the Nigerianisation programme, right up to the conceptual development,
construction and chartering of six (6) newly built DFDE LNG Carriers to NLNG.
What do you mean by
Nigerianisation?
When I talk about
Nigerianisation, I am talking about what it takes for the ships owned by Bonny
Gas Transport (BGT), BW Gas and Nippon Yusen Kaisha (NYK) and chartered to
NLNG, to be manned by Nigerians who are trained right from the development
stage of cadetship up to captain and chief engineer levels respectively.
Different interventions It goes beyond this, to developing these people into
what we call superintendents for the purpose of managing ships; that is one of
those things we acquired as part of our capacity development drive. Some have
also become managers in the office. Through different interventions, including
Ship Management Knowledge Transfer Programme (SMKTA), Nigerians are today
manning NLNG Ship Management Limited (NSML – a fully owned subsidiary of NLNG),
right from the managing director to the vessels. Not only do we manage ships,
we also manage terminals. The Bonny terminal, where we load Liquefied Natural
Gas (LNG), Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) and condensate, is managed by
Nigerians. These are professionals who have been thoroughly developed in marine
activities and who have acquired the capacity to make sure things are run and
cargos delivered safely to customers’ terminals all around the world.
Who were the people managing these activities
before now?
These two activities, terminal management and ship
management, were done by one of the shareholders of NLNG. Whichever way you
look at it, with the help and support of shareholders, we have been able to
acquire this capacity. Today we are proud that we run terminals, we manage
ships and we supervise the construction of our ships. That is what I mean by
Nigerianisation. How many people have undergone the training? When you look at
officers and cadets that have undergone this training, you will be looking at
about 500 of them. When you look at personnel like ratings or cadets, they are
between 700 and 800.
Do you train them
from the scratch?
When we started the training programme, all we did was to
identify people who have been given initial college training by maritime
college or Maritime Academy of Nigeria (MAN), Oron. We then took them to
reputable colleges in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in Europe for some
training and international certification because, sadly, MAN does not have the
capacity to issue international maritime certificates. But it is something that
can be corrected. Within that context, these individuals were trained both at
the college and at sea, and they continued on their career path to support and
grow NLNG and the industry.
What informed the
decision to establish Maritime Centre of Excellence (MCOE)
The Maritime Centre of Excellence (MCOE) is an outfit which
we created for the purpose of domiciling all the knowledge that we at NLNG have
acquired over time. In the process of chartering ships, creating commercial
activities, constructing ships and managing terminals, Nigerians have acquired
knowledge and participated actively in these areas. We deemed it necessary to
keep these activities in-house and grow it in such a way that we can
continuously grow more people and use that knowledge for the purpose of revolutionising
the Nigerian shipping industry. MCOE carries out a lot of activities. Some of
them include things which go beyond simulation of maritime activities, like
running courses which include maritime training, electronic chart display
(ECDIS), high voltage training, ship-handling, marine pilotage and vessel
traffic management systems (VTMS). We also carry out bespoke training services.
Apart from maritime training, MCOE also carries out research and consultancy.
We can optimise the running of equipment onboard a ship and thus reduce the
operating expenses of the ship owners. We can run model testing of ships that
are going to be constructed. We provide maritime financial appraisal. So, if
you want to build or charter ships, we can conduct a maritime appraisal of that
business which you can take to the bank or financiers. We do “Quality, Health
& Safety Manual” development and provide maritime standard services. We can
also conduct technical evaluations in terms of Ship Registry & Flag State requirement;
something that we have done for Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety
Agency (NIMASA) before. In addition, we do maritime project management. We can
supervise vessel constructions, dry dock for you if you want to repair and/ or
lay up your vessel if there is no activity for it. So, the Maritime Centre of
Excellence was to domicile all the experiences that we have gotten as
professionals and to utilise it for the purpose of growing the Nigerian
shipping industry.
What is the cost
nature of the project?
To put a cost to
Maritime Centre of Excellence will depend on which cost you are considering. Is
it the cost of the people who I call the software or the cost of the hardware.
The hardware the simulators. The simulators averagely cost some $5 million. Is
it the cost of the building? We inherited the building and renovated it. It
goes beyond $2 million. The one I cannot quantify is the people trained right
from cadetship to acquire a lot of knowledge and capacity. You cannot put
monetary value to that.
How many ships does NLNG have in its fleet?
NLNG fleet consists of 23 LNG carrier today. Six of these
ships are state-of-the-art, dual fuel diesel electric engine (DFDE) vessels
with capacity of about 178,000 cubic meters. These ships are currently settling
down into the fleet and as you know, we have a very high safety record. We
continue to traverse the oceans of the world without any incident or problem
and making sure that our people provide the required support to the
international maritime committee. We do search and rescue for other communities
and other nations. We make sure that we carry out our contributions within the
context of the global maritime industry. So, for us as professionals, it is a
pride that we contribute to the international maritime industry, in addition to
the services we provide to NLNG.
Any challenge?
The challenges stem from operating and maintaining these
vessels. Maintaining these high class of vessels requires a level of technical
knowhow. And you will agree with me that when it comes to looking for spare
parts which are not available in Nigeria, we have to get most of them by
bringing them in from our stock abroad. This stock could well easily be on
Bonny Island but we have customs restrictions. Things like these are no issues in
other countries. To use those spare parts in Nigeria, we have to store them at
the depot in France; something we could otherwise easily do here. Another
challenge is that the Nigerian waters have been declared a high risk area
(HRA). It has been so for the past 10 years. So, we have to put a lot of
efforts into ensuring safe passage of our ships. We had some support from the
Navy and we have had to acquire some security vessels at significant cost. We
pay higher insurance premium for protecting our people on board the ships.
These challenges have always come and we have always found a way to mitigate
them. We can’t say we are challenge-free; however, what is correct is that we
always found ways to surmount them.
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