LEADERSHIP Oil & Gas Local Content Champion of the Year 2024: ARCO Engineering Limited

ARCO Group Plc. is one of the leading indigenous oil and gas servicing companies in Nigeria that has witnessed significant growth as a result of the nation’s local content policy.

Providing leadership in local content development has allowed ARCO to grow beyond its original industry into a dynamic group of world-class companies. On April 1, 2015, these companies were reincorporated under the name, ARCO Group.

ARCO Maintenance and Engineering Limited (AMEL), (successor of ARCO Petrochemical Engineering Company) has significant experience in the maintenance and engineering capability of rotating and reciprocating equipment (gas turbines, steam-turbines and compressors) and providing electrical power solutions.

It delivers outstanding local partnership solutions through its workforce (over 170 Nigerians), who are supported by its Global Technical Partners through technology injection and transfer of know-how.

One significant factor that made ARCO the champion of local content was when in 2007, the Niger Delta crisis got to a frightening dimension, the expatriates maintaining gas turbines and compressors for one of the International Oil Companies (IOCs) were evacuated from the site.

After their exit, the responsibility to maintain this sophisticated equipment fell on ARCO’s engineers and technicians.

Having sufficiently developed local capability through training and capacity building, ARCO deployed young Nigerians it trained to keep the plants running in the absence of the expatriate engineers and technicians. This was a pleasant surprise to the industry.

Also, during the Niger Delta crisis, Nigerian sailors who were highly qualified like their expatriate counterparts, but were hitherto looked down upon, were called be the crew and manage the vessels. They creditably discharged the responsibility to the amazement of those who had been skeptical about their abilities.

Today, Nigeria has reduced the operational costs of its vessels by over 40 per cent because Indigenous operators, whose capacities the firm has helped to build, are now playing major roles in the marine subsector.

The ARCO Group has carved out a singular space for itself in Nigeria’s competitive oil and gas sector, focusing on marine logistics, maintenance, testing and drone technology.

In 1980, Alfred Okoigun, founder of the group, noticed that Nigerian oil refineries were still importing essential spare parts from abroad – a lengthy and inefficient process. He saw an unmissable business opportunity. With only $680 at his disposal, he quit his job, started his own company and became one of the first agents in the country to represent some of the major oil and gas maintenance firms in the world.

Today, 38 years after its humble beginnings, ARCO Group is a leading oil and gas servicing firm that aims to be a billion-dollar company by 2025.

Okoigun, now the company’s group managing director, has not forgotten the hardships of his start-up journey. ARCO supports young entrepreneurs by sponsoring seminars and scholarships for young engineering students, for which he has received many awards for his contributions to the national oil and gas sector.

ARCO mainly focuses on downstream oil and gas services. The ARCO Group is split into four subsidiaries. ARCO Marine handles the marine logistics of the oil and gas industry. ARCO Maintenance and Engineering handles rotating and reciprocating equipment (gas turbines, steam turbines and compressors). ARCO Integrity provides testing and assessment, while the newly formed ARCO Worldwide focuses on the drone industry.

At the time of going public, the Group was providing jobs for over 500 people. This milestone was the result of many small changes that contributed to the overall transformation, such as choosing good people, applying the right economic model, and adopting a growth mindset.

The group has the goal of creating a constellation of autonomous subsidiaries and diversifying its product offering.

The group aims to acquire its own intellectual property and build a research and development department. Ideally, in the near future, ARCO is repositioning to start exporting ARCO products to the rest of the world.

Some of the areas it is looking at are technology, agriculture, drones, and media, as it wants to be seen as a Nigerian company in the global context.

With these achievements, ARCO Engineering is a meritorious winner of LEADERSHIP Oil and Gas Local Content of the Year award.