A track record of reliability and growth

Nigeria

John Yowika, CEO of Petro Extra Energy Services, talks to The Energy Year about the company’s development, its business strategy and its approach to regional expansion. Petro Extra Energy Services is a Nigerian company specialising in engineering, procurement, construction and fabrication services.

Can you give us an overview of Petro Extra Energy Services’ development and services?
Petro Extra Energy Services was incorporated in 2013. Our core services then were mostly procurement and supply services and marine equipment maintenance. We started in a two-bedroom bungalow with just five permanent staff in our employ. We have since moved to a bigger facility housing over 27 permanent staff.
We have also expanded our business to cover major mechanical and electrical fabrication and installation services, cathodic protection and coating services, fire equipment/crane maintenance and procurement of spares, amongst other services.
Before now, securing funds to execute projects as a local content company was a difficult task as banks would usually not want to partner with startups, especially in the oil and gas sector. With our consistent growth and impressive track record, we are now at a stage where banks are very willing to finance our projects. We recently entered a financial partnership agreement with Fidelity Bank Plc.

What challenges do local companies face in the Nigerian energy sector?
Aside from the lack of access to funds to execute projects, which has been an age-old challenge, local companies are not guaranteed opportunities, especially in the oil and gas sector.
Some multinational oil exploration companies are selling off their assets due to insecurity in the nation and since local companies mostly partner with or render services to these multinationals, we have limited opportunities. When the opportunities are not there and you have salaries to pay, equipment to maintain and a facility to manage, it becomes a matter of time before the business crumbles.
To solve these issues, the government can review existing laws to ensure all duly registered local companies have equal contract opportunities as long as they have the technical capacity and the manpower. This would also reduce the problem of unemployment in the country.

What are Petro Extra Energy Services’ current contracts?
Currently, we are rounding off a cathodic protection reactivation service for Nigerian Gas Company. The project started late last year and we are almost at the close-out stage. We are also exploring opportunities in the current Nigeria LNG Train 7 project and are hopeful that given our vast experience in the field we should be able to secure a contract with them.

Which project has been Petro Extra Energy Services’ showcase contract?
In 2019, we completed the structural fabrication of an offshore platform, OML 100, for one of the multinationals. This has been by far the most challenging service we had to carry out, largely because most of the materials for the job were procured from foreign OEMs and the exchange rate was never stable during that period.
However, as a company we had to protect our image, so we went all out and delivered 100%. We lost financially, but we had to; our clients must be able to count on us. Abandoning projects is not something we ever want to try. Today we can look back and nod with satisfaction.
Since then, we have gone on to deliver several other similar projects, but this remains our showcase contract due to the challenges and lags we had to overcome and the many lessons we learnt from it.

Read our latest insights on:

• Multinational
• Nigeria