Engineering for Angola’s oil and gas upturn

Angola

Michel Hamon, managing director of Doris Engenharia Angola Lda (DEAL), talks to The Energy Year about about the company’s development of capabilities and where it sees opportunities in Angola. The Angolan subsidiary of DORIS Group, DEAL provides engineering and technical assistance services for onshore and offshore oil and gas projects in Angola.

What is your assessment of the state of the upstream sector in Angola?
The upstream sector is clearly ramping up, with major efforts put into maintaining or increasing production. Some development projects are greenfield. Many involve subsea developments with tiebacks to existing facilities and brownfield works on these facilities. Others involve upgrades of these existing facilities for life extension. All of these projects face many challenges and require a significant amount of engineering work.

How important is Angola for DORIS Group?
Angola is a key country for DORIS Group, with an involvement of all DORIS Group resources worldwide for supporting Angolan development projects through engineering and technical assistance.
DORIS created DEAL in 2007 with the objective of being close to Angolan clients and developing in-country capabilities in the long term. For the last 15 years and with the support of other affiliates of DORIS Group, we have been constantly enhancing our existing technical capabilities and developing new ones, thus growing our in-country activity year after year.

What are the company’s main activities and services?
In Angola, DORIS provides a full range of technical assistance, consultancy and engineering services for onshore and offshore oil and gas projects. These activities are managed by our Luanda office with the support of other offices of the Group depending on capabilities, with the constant objective of maximising and promoting the work executed locally.
Our main in-country activities and capabilities include installation engineering, 2D and 3D design, and surveying. These activities are complemented by DORIS Group’s capabilities and expertise in order to provide a global solution to our clients.

What kinds of opportunities do you see ahead and are you looking into any new projects?
New greenfield projects are moving forward, such as Agogo Phase 2 in Block 15/06 and Cameia in Block 20/21. We also anticipate increasing opportunities in brownfield activities, either for tiebacks of new subsea developments or for upgrades of existing facilities. Indeed, licences are being extended and many platforms are above 20 years old. These platforms require upgrades for life extension and also greenhouse gas [GHG] emissions reduction. For the last few years, DORIS has been developing capabilities and expertise in platform life extension and reduction of GHG emissions to support and bring added value to oil and gas companies in this required effort. Maintenance and refurbishment of onshore plants and refineries also represent opportunities for which our DORIS Group’s expertise can bring added value.

What are the key trends in GHG emissions reduction and what is Doris’ strategy to take part in them?
We witness that oil and gas companies care about GHG emissions reduction in Angola too, and we anticipate that this trend will amplify in the coming years. In 2021 for instance, we conducted studies for TotalEnergies’ Dalia FPSO. GHG reduction cannot be limited to flaring, and many existing systems can be modified to reduce GHG emissions while new facilities can be designed from the start to limit them. DORIS has in particular developed specific tools at the design and operation level to help oil and gas companies successfully achieve their objective.

How does Doris Engenharia Angola rank under the new local content legislation?
Engineering is part of the local content preference list of goods and services and we totally fit with the new local content legislation. DORIS has been developing local engineering activities and capabilities from the start. Our objective is to continue bringing more and more activities in-country by increasing our local capabilities and experience while maximising the work done by locals.
All of this is possible because of our initial strategy to develop and maintain a strong core national team, even during the years of crisis. Today our engineering team counts above 20 nationals, most of them with more than seven years of shared experience with us, and our ratio of Angolanisation is 90%. As you can see, we actually did not wait for the new law to push for local content and Angolanisation.

What is your strategy for implementing new technologies that help to optimise costs?
We were previously mentioning brownfield activities on existing facilities. A first step consists in getting a clear picture of these existing facilities. In that respect, 3D modelling and laser scanning are very interesting technologies. For instance, getting a 3D laser scan model of a platform and eventually transforming it into an intelligent 3D model with smart engineering tools can prove very valuable to the operator, saving time and costs. This is particularly true for these old platforms where existing documentation and as-built drawings are not available or not up to date.
Therefore, we have been continuously developing our local experience and capabilities in 3D modelling, survey and laser scan so that we can propose to our client a fully integrated solution. We have successfully conducted several surveys, as particularly since the Covid crisis, 3D tools are today an integrated part of our design activities, and we currently provide 3D laser scan models of all platforms in Block 3/05. Our plan is to develop this local expertise further.

How is Doris positioned for growth in Angola?
DORIS has much valuable experience to bring to the many challenges that Angolan oil and gas projects are facing, either greenfield or brownfield, offshore or onshore, life extension and GHG emissions reduction, from topsides to subsea.
Locally, we continue increasing our range of experience by developing capabilities such as surveys, laser scan and 3D modelling – smart engineering tools which are aimed at increasing our in-country engineering activity. Our activity and experience are applicable not only to the upstream sector but to the downstream as well.

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