Local content (LC) is an issue that is not far from the thoughts of any oil company or contractor involved in the offshore sector, most notably in West Africa and Brazil.

The operators need to meet requirements which means they have to scrutinise what suppliers and contractors are doing when they review tender documents.

FMC Technologies has been involved in the growth of West African deepwater sector since Total’s first big project - Girassol - nearly 15 years ago now.

For the first time, the subsea hardware market leader is engineering, manufacturing and assembling subsea xmas trees in Nigeria - for Shell’s Bonga Northwest (SEN, 31/10) subsea tieback project. All ten of the trees will be produced at its facility in Onne with engineering done in Lagos.

This is just a warmup, though, for its biggest ever contract in West Africa for Total’s Egina (31/16) development on which 44 subsea trees will be supplied.

This is happening elsewhere as well. Although Angola will be producing 2mmb/d at some point this year, Ghana is seen as being more advanced in manufacturing.

The second big deepwater project there - Tullow Oil’s TEN (31/15) fpso development - is expected to be a transformational one for Ghanaian society with much project work expected to be done in country. FMC is expanding its facility in Takoradi to be ready to handle manufacturing and assembly of subsea xmas trees.

There are other sectors - both in West Africa and East Africa - where such facilities could be developed and FMC is looking to build capability ahead of demand in order to meet the requirements of international operators and the national oil companies.

With more local facilities, FMC’s main plants in Houston and Dunfermline, north of Edinburgh, will focus more on closer markets. And while having local facilities do present ‘challenges’, the advantages in term of lead times and logistics offsets some of these.

Offshore