Senate intervenes in $.6m contract rift between Chevron, Solewant

The Senate Committee on Local Content has intervened in a disputed contract sum of 670,000 dollars between Chevron and Solewant, a Nigerian firm involved in pipe coating for oil and gas companies.

Solewant won the bid to coat pipes for Chevron Nigeria Limited through a contracting company called Vurin in 2017.

The Vice Chairman of the committee, Sen. Godswill Akpabio, in a meeting at the National Assembly, over the matter, expressed satisfaction with the level of resolution.

He expressed satisfaction that the committee was able to resolve an issue that could not be resolved by stakeholders for over a year.

“I am happy we are having a happy ending. I want to thank all the parties involved in this and assure them that Solewant is going to improve on its capacity.

“This project has a timeline and from Chevron’s explanation, any further delay will make them incur more expenses.

“So, Solewant should forward a letter pursuant to this meeting on the resolution reached.

“The letter should indicate that it has agreed to receive the sum of 657,000 dollars as full and final settlement on the contract and that you will assist them to load the pipe to their facility.

“On receipt of the letter by Chevron, as agreed, the payment will be made in 10 days.

“The letter should further indicate that within the next 48 hours Solewant will present a letter through Vurin to Chevron and that the pipes will be moved with no further obligation,’’ he said.

The lawmaker expressed satisfaction that local content was improving in the country.

The Managing Director, Solewant, Mr Solomon Ewanehi, appreciated the committee for resolving the matter.

“I want to thank the committee for its intervention. We have had something to take home and I feel that Chevron may have done that because of your intervention.

“We will like to assure you that Nigeria content is not failing. We have accepted since you have given the mandate that they should take the pipes.

“Our business is to coat pipes. As I speak with you right now we are still coating pipes for other customers. We do not seize pipes but we had some disputes with this particular client.

“We thank you all for your time and we will support the movement of the pipes.

“However, we will like to appeal that at point of load out. We will want to put in record that the pipes are not mechanically protected when being loaded.

“We would appeal for a day or two to have load out procedure so that when it gets to another company it will not be a bad job that was done in our plant. So that it does not become an issue,’’ he said.

Ewanehi had earlier said that “the total contract sum agreed upon, with variation, amounted to 2,620,650 million dollars’’.

He noted that in the course of executing the project, there were disagreements on contractual sum agreement, level of work done and inability to beat deadline.

“Solewant has brought the job up to about 60 per cent, but Vurin is claiming the work was only 38 per cent completed based on Chevron measuring procedure,” he said.

He further said the amount of money in contention with the level of work done so far was 657,000 dollars which Solewant was expecting Chevron to pay before moving the pipes.

Mr Emenike Okorie, a Director with Chevron, said the company was no longer interested in working with Solewant.

He said the company had agreed to pay the outstanding 657,000 dollars in contention to end the contract.

“We have the highest regard for the parliament but there are some technical difficulties which will not allow us continue the contract with Solewant.

“We have exhausted a lot of the time that we have. We had a lot of spare time which we no longer have.

“By our standard they have completed only 38 per cent of the job and now they are asking to do 62 per cent in 18 days. They could not get it done in over six months.

“Where we are it is not the time for us to begin to experiment further. It was five months ago we would have allowed that.

“On fears on blacklisting, Chevron does not have that power. We are here to support local content and we would work with them. If there are opportunities in further to engage with them we would do that.

“But on this contract, we have received a letter of no objection from the Nigerian Content Development Management Board (NCDMB) to move our pipes and to recover the schedule,’’ he said.(NAN)