In a bid to improve on the shipping capacity of the country, the Shipowners’ Association of Nigeria (SOAN) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with a Chinese company, China Complete National Engineering Corporation for the supply of 23, 000 deadweight vessels at 6.5 metres structured for Nigeria.
The 1st Vice President of SOAN, Dr. McGeorge Onyong who made this known in a panel discussion at the just concluded OTL Africa Downstream Week held in Lagos said that they were going to develop the MoU and then have financing for that as well.
Onyong added that the same goes for ship building where he said that they were going to partner to be able to build vessels without necessarily waiting for government even though they were working with government to achieve that.
According to him,” Like I said, we want to work with them (government), but you see, government requires leadership. This business that is as big as ours where if you blunder as a group, you run into a serious problem, so, it is something we need leadership in this area and visionary leadership that will see the opportunities that we are trying to harness here.
“It is on record that 60% of the world oil is transported by ships, so we are not in competition with anybody. If we want to turn this economy into a global economy, we want to do well; we have to invest a lot in shipping. We are holding the bulls by the horn and we are ready to take on the world”.
He stated that SOAN members now have opportunity in areas where pipelines were no longer working very well even as he disclosed that a lot of work was going on in that area saying their vessels can now load from marginal fields FSOs and FPSO for export which he said they were doing effectively.
While admitting to the fact that they needed cargo, he appealed to the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to help the association adding that they needed vessels as well as crew which he said was dotted with a lot of opportunities.
He continued,” In fact, anybody who read anything in the University, even if you read Sociology or political science, if you go to Maritime Academy, Oron, you might well get the job and we have offered our vessels to NIMASA, to anybody that cares, that we can have our pipes on the vessel to train our cadets because if we don’t have crew, you cannot buy ships and give them to any tailor to run for you but I tell you, we need tailors also in shipping because in shipping, you have all profession, hair dressers, tailors, in fact, musicians because when they are at sea, they can play some music and keep themselves going.
“The United States has said that the seafarer is the biggest worker in the world because they control 90% of the global trade and they make sure your goods arrive safely. That is why we treat them very well, we treat them like members of our family and we ensure that whatever we do, we look after their welfare because they look after our ships.
“Also, talking about ship building and ship repairing, we have to travel very far, sometimes, up to Senegal to do our dry docking and obtain inspection and classification society works, unfortunately, that is very bad. But I want to say that as ship owners, we have risen to the challenges. We talk about the cabotage, yes, that is a different ball game but we have stopped lamenting. I am the Chairman of the Committee that is looking into many innovative areas in our business.
“One, we have an MoU which is being organized right now with a Chinese company which is China Complete National Engineering Corporation that they are going to give us vessels that are structured for Nigeria, 23, 000 deadweight at 6.5 metres. We are going to develop that and then we would also have financing for that”.
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