The Energy Republic February Edition 2022

SNEPCO INTERVIEW
available and that was how I got into the
Deepwater space. I became the first female
Asset Manager for the Floating Production
Storage and Offloading (FPSO) vessels for Shell
in Nigeria – first on Shallow water vessel (which
we call Sea Eagle) and thereafter first on the
Bonga Deepwater FPSO asset.
I am here today as the MD SNEPCo; an exciting
role managing the Deepwater space as we have
Operated and non-operated Assets. The role
provides me with the opportunity to develop
people, which is something I love to do, and to
also grow our Deepwater business in Nigeria.
TER: Before your appointment as SNEPCO’s
Managing Director, you have been the Asset
Manager of Bonga FPSO over the years. What
were your greatest lessons and operational
excellence during that period?
Shell Nigeria Exploration & Production Company Digital Twin FPSO
Elohor: Empowering People: I learned
something early in my career: if you take care of
your people, they will take care of you and that’s
something I imbibed early on. When you
empower people, you would be amazed at how
much they would deliver. Empowering the
Bonga team helped us grow the business, take
out costs, embrace technology. We learned fast
and moved on.
Having a Learner’s Mindset, where everybody
has to be open to learning new things has been a
great asset. If you see anything happening in
other places and it’s better than yours, learn.
Staying open to learning was another great
lesson I imbibed. We grew the business, drove
cost efficiency, took out cost, embraced
multiskilling, digitalization, grew WRFM (that is,
Well, Reservoir and Facilities Management),
and we learned from other Operating Units.
Digitalization and proactive threat monitoring
have enabled us to improve operational
excellence, but we are still on the journey,
working towards being the best in class
TER: As SNEPCo’s first female Managing
Director, what are your plans to grow the
company’s Deepwater operation in Nigeria?
Elohor: Nigeria remains an important part of
our Deepwater portfolio. The Shell-operated
Bonga field has produced more than 900 million
barrels of oil since coming online in 2005.
Through FPSO upgrades and subsea tiebacks to
developments, such as Bonga North West,
capacity has continued to grow.
Last year, we renewed the license and contract
for the OML-118 block, which will unlock the
next phase of development of the significant
remaining block resources. Our current
priorities include to:
I. Maximize the resources from our existing
assets. This we will achieve by increasing
operational excellence, especially in production
availability, reduction of greenhouse gas
emissions, and cost discipline.
ii. Reposition all our activities to be fully
aligned with the new OML-118 production
sharing contract signed last year with the
Nigerian government.
iii. Recommence infill drilling activities, as
well as near field exploration and
appraisal. We need to continue working
with our partners and stakeholders to
mature capital and growth projects to
enable final investment decisions.
iv. Continue focus on developing,
empowering, and caring for our people –
they are the greatest team I have worked
with, and I know that we have not reached
our full potential yet.
TER: What are SNEPCo’s pivotal project
development plans and new investment
focus for the year 2022 and beyond?
Elohor: In 2022, we are resuming infill
drilling and completion activities to bring
additional new oil capacity onstream
before the end of the year. We are also
t a r g e t i n g a n e a r - f i e l d
exploration/appraisal opportunity which
we hope to quickly develop within 12
months.
Having obtained the license renewal for
the OML-118 block, we are working with
o u r p a r t n e r s a n d g o v e r n m e n t
stakeholders to mature some major
projects including Bonga North and Bonga
Southwest to a final investment decision in
the coming years.
TER: In terms of Research and
Development, what are SNEPCo’s latest
R&D plans and innovations to build
capacities in-country?
Elohor: At SNEPCo, we value the culture of
innovation and the potency of digital
technologies in strengthening our strategic
competitiveness - from safety to production
availability, cost leadership, and staff
productivity. We have developed a coherent
approach to take full advantage of the
opportunities in this space. Our approach
focuses on first ensuring that the relevant
aspects of our core processes are amenable
to the application of digitalization and
i n n o v a t i o n ( s i m p l i f i c a t i o n a n d
standardization).
Next, we explore how our digitized core can
enable growth in our key business
performance indicators; and, lastly, we
explore opportunities to generate value from
new business models, based on emerging
external developments.
We are focusing on foundational elements
such as data. We have developed a data
strategy to improve governance, data
ownership, quality, and availability. With data
growing exponentially, coupled with the
significant drop in costs of digital
technologies such as sensors, processing
power, the emergence of cloud computing
and storage over the past few years, gaining
insights from data to deliver business value is
imperative. It’s a huge game-changer.
Data and the application of artificial
intelligence are helping us to advance asset
management excellence by improving
availability and reliability through our
Predictive Maintenance programs. We
believe that about 50% of Unscheduled
Deferment could be prevented by
digitalization.
Shell Companies in Nigeria are in
collaboration with two Nigerian Universities
researching the production of synthetic base
fluids for drilling operations from local raw
materials, thereby substituting imported
fluids and stimulating industrial production
for the Nigerian oil and gas industry with
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THE ENERGY REPUBLIC I SPECIAL EDITION