A local pioneer in Nigeria’s oilfield services sector

Nigeria

Dr Kayode Thomas, CEO of Bell Oil & Gas, talks to The Energy Year about the company’s standpoint on the development of local content, its portfolio and the latest developments regarding the commissioning of its new facility. Bell Oil & Gas is a Nigerian oilfield services company providing a range of solutions, including procurement, fabrication, installation and maintenance.

What is Bell Oil & Gas’s standpoint when it comes to the development of local content?
The Nigerian oil and gas sector is experiencing positive momentum, and the way we want to capitalise on it is by positioning ourselves and actualising our vision to become the reference point for true local content development in the industry. Our vision to be a champion of local content was conceptualised a long time ago, eight years before the Nigerian Oil and Gas Industry Content Development Act was signed into law in 2010.
Supporting domestic projects, fostering local skills and capabilities with in-house training and promoting made-in-Nigeria products which align with the industry’s needs are all characteristics that fall within the very fabric of our DNA.
Therefore, when you look at Bell Oil and Gas’s operations, you will see that we always add value, from a local company’s perspective, to our clients’ operations. We are very passionate about local content, and this is the big advantage that we bring to the sector.

Can you walk us through your project portfolio and how you started gaining the required knowledge and developing your capabilities?
We have worked in composite pipe prefabrication or spooling for many years, dating back to our first contract on Shell’s Bonga FPSO back in 2004. We then commissioned our spooling workshop back in 2015. We were the first indigenous company with such a facility in Nigeria. On top of that, we have certifications across the board for the fabrication of composite pipes.
In terms of recent projects, one of our latest undertakings is on the NLNG Train 7 project. We’re working in collaboration with Saudi Arabian pipe manufacturer, Amiantit, to produce and supply all the required composite pipes, do installation and take care of the training and post-commissioning activities. We are very well positioned in after-sales services as well.
Throughout our history, we have been involved in some landmark projects that have shaped the country’s oil and gas sector. Apart from NLNG Train 7, we participated in Shell’s Bonga deepwater project, Total’s Egina and Ikike oilfield developments, the ANOH Gas Processing Project and several others. We managed to do this because, besides our technical competence, we also have world-class technical partnerships in place with OEMs that have been in business for decades which are very well known by IOCs and international service companies.
For instance, we have been working with our partners to import and supply their valves for years. Now it is time to put Bell Oil & Gas’s products on the market. What we are trying to achieve in our company goes beyond business, as we want to be a vehicle for knowledge transfer. Our definition of local content is not just about the physical infrastructure and the investment but also revolves around learning, personal growth, talent management and development.
When we started in 2002, we knew nothing. We followed guidance from our technical partners and trained our people accordingly. Then, we built ourselves over time and started sending our workforce abroad for training, and now the manufacturers have faith in our people to train themselves and train and certify others too. This has been our journey and shows what we believe local content is really about.

What are the latest developments regarding the commissioning of your facility?
In 2020, we broke ground with our transformational project “Evolution.” The name signifies the company’s transformation into a major force in our industry when it comes to value adding services. We have established a 15,000-square-metre facility in the Lekki Free Zone with an initial investment of over USD 15 million for the manufacturing, assembly, maintenance, testing and painting of valves, as well as OCTG [oil country tubular goods], pipe threading and machining. The facility also houses our composite pipe workshop for fabrication services and storage. We plan to deliver “made-in-Nigeria” products for the local oil and gas industry and also provide it with an additional logistics base for in-country operations.
Following some delays, we commissioned the facility in October 2024. This is the biggest undertaking we have ever done. The project itself is being implemented in phases, with a total planned investment in excess of USD 100 million over the next five years.
This project is what we call an integrated facility. It is primarily designed to support drilling operations – from the provision of casing and tubing, to local threading and machining, to the production of pup joints and accessories.
It is also meant to increase our capabilities in the valve space. We will move from supply and maintenance to becoming a top-tier player in this field, able to produce a wide range of new valves – from 2-inch up to 24-inch – spanning a wide range of types. These include ball, gate, globe, check, safety relief valves and many other valve types.
Moreover, we will have the capacity to refurbish valves and turn old ones into new ones by disassembling, repairing, reassembling, sandblasting and painting them with the client’s preferred colour. We have already started receiving inquiries and are doing some work with Total and Shell.
We also have a mobile valve workshop, which comprises fully kitted 40-foot containers with their own equipment. We can do a range of testing and repair work at the client’s base prior to valves being put into operation. We can take the workshop to the client’s site where installation will happen. This allows us to be more nimble, flexible, robust and responsive, which is an added value that nobody else in the country can provide.
We have called the overall initiative Project Evolution, and it is aimed at demonstrating how the company has been evolving, where it needs to go and what kind of value we are going to bring to the industry as a whole via our evolution.

What is your assessment of the local content landscape and of Bell Oil & Gas’s contribution to enhancing it?
The NCDMB [Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board] already recognises us as one of only a handful companies with demonstrable capacity, technical competences and a solid track record for everything that has to do with piping, casing and tubing. To promote local production, you really have to protect domestic companies and their products.
This is what NCDMB is doing. In particular they are supporting efforts aimed at returning Nigeria to being the largest oil-producing nation in Africa.
Despite the hydrocarbons industry being massive in Nigeria, there are not enough local players. Bell Oil & Gas is well known to all our clients but the next step is to look at the bigger picture to make sure that potential clients and investors realise that there are Nigerian companies that are credible and able to deliver because sometimes it is still not believed.
The commissioning of our facility moves us in the right direction because, as they say, seeing is believing. We want them to come and see that when we say, “we have got this,” we really have.

How difficult is it for an indigenous player to get access to funding to finance projects and new facilities?
Financing is a chicken-or-the-egg situation. The typical situation when you go to banks requesting funding would be something like, “I need funding for this,” and they’ll reply, “Do you already have contracts?” Then you respond, “Well, I need to have the facility to have contracts.” Then the bank says, “Well, you need to have the contracts to get the money to build the facility.” And the clients say “you need the facility to get the contracts”. It is an endless cycle.
That’s why we went through alternative sources of funding to get our plant going, and the truth is that one of the reasons it was delayed is because of the funding. No Nigerian bank funded us or believed in our vision, which is unfortunate as it shows that many Nigerian banks only pay lip service to “Project Nigeria.”
Many simply do not believe in local companies. We have proven them wrong. Having access to funds is a real challenge in Nigeria. It holds back not only business development but local content as well because, if you cannot fund it, you cannot deliver it or promote it properly. This is also why we pleaded with the NCDMB to make the Nigerian Content Development Fund more accessible by looking at the current structure, which has made accessibility a tall order.

What opportunities do you see ahead for both Bell Oil & Gas and the oil and gas sector in general?
Over 90% of Nigeria’s foreign exchange earnings come from the oil and gas sector. As you know, many IOCs are divesting from their onshore assets. They are not leaving Nigeria. They are just reprioritising and moving away from what they perceive to be troublesome assets and focusing more on the offshore, deepwater and the development of non-associated gas.
There have been three executive orders issued by President Tinubu in March 2024. The first one was about incentives and tax rebates and breaks aimed at attracting IOCs investing in non-associated gas, midstream capital and gas utilisation allowance and incentives mostly in deepwater, since we have not seen any major greenfield offshore exploration activities in the last decade in Nigeria.
So, I fully expect that these will create further opportunities. We need deepwater exploration to achieve the 2-million-bopd target, as we are not going to hit it with existing fields alone, and we need to combine this with the onshore assets and the brownfields that can keep ramping up production. This is where the future lies.
Having said so, IOCs’ onshore divestments represent a welcome opportunity that provides Nigerian companies with room for growth for the first time in a long time. The other two executive orders move along the same trajectory. The second one is on local content compliance while the third seeks to reduce contracting costs and timelines in the sector. These are some of the areas which have hampered the development of indigenous companies.
Put all that together and you can then see that there is a renewed vision that is giving us a lot of hope for the future. To provide you with some examples, we have over 5,000 kilometres of in-operative pipeline network in Nigeria, and we are in the middle of the “Decade of Gas.” Sooner or later, our pipeline infrastructure has to be on the top of the federal government’s agenda, and when it is, we will be there as a pipe company.
Moreover, as drilling is happening – whether it is onshore, offshore or deepwater – operators have to use casing, tubing, steel pipes, pumps, compressors, valves and all the other equipment and services we provide. On top of that, the country is really witnessing a reduction in crude oil theft, as the government has improved security, introduced incentives for local companies and has generally become more serious about the wellbeing of indigenous service providers.
In Nigeria, you have to take everything in bytes – not kilobytes, megabytes or gigabytes – but we are very excited about what the future has in store and encouraged about what we have been seeing in the last year from the authorities to foster and safeguard a better business environment.

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