World Report

Saadeh Habib
Managing Director of Weco

‘One hundred percent of our fabrication is carried out in Nigeria’

erving the oil and gas industry since 1963, Weco Engineering & Construction Company has more than four decades of experience in the Nigerian energy market.
Founded by a Lebanese trader, Amin Habin, who arrived in the country back in 1937, Weco is surely one of the earliest champions of Nigeria’s fast-growing indigenous oil and gas sector. Supported in the early days by Shell, among others, the company has flourished into a modern player serving most of the major names now operating in the country.

Weco specialises in composite mechanical, electrical and instrumentation projects, pipelines and the fabrication of structures for both onshore and offshore environments. The company supplies international standard goods and services to projects in some of the most challenging conditions.

Saadeh Habib, the company’s Managing Director, is proud of the way Weco has helped build the domestic skills base. He says one of the firm’s most important competitive advantages is its trust in local employees, in contrast to the legion of expatriates employed elsewhere. Indeed, many of Weco’s engineers have gone on to forge their own successful enterprises or have been snapped up by the multinationals.

The same is true on the manufacturing side. “One hundred per cent of our fabrication is carried out in Nigeria,” says Mr Habib.

Weco’s broad manufacturing business incorporates piping, used in flow stations and oil and gas plants, and structural fabrication. During the past decade, the company has also moved into the more technically demanding, but high growth, offshore segment, following in the tracks of the supermajors. “We are also into structural fabrications for offshore platforms, especially structures such as jackets, bridges and platforms, as well as flare booms.”

Aside from Shell, well-known clients include ExxonMobil, Chevron and Total, as well as some of the major drilling contractors operating locally.

Although all of its fabrication facilities are located inside Nigeria, the company has opened up a procurement office in Houston in the US and maintains solid relations with many international firms. There are no formal partnerships in place yet, but Mr Habib says talks are under way with a number of potential strategic partners to help the business grow in the future.

He believes that companies like Weco have every chance of making it big overseas if they can capture the opportunity now on their doorstep. There are key constraints, not least the difficulty facing Nigerian firms in accessing affordable financing, but the government is fighting its case with plans to put as much work as possible in the laps of local players.

Mr Habib is confident about Weco’s future. “If all the resources are there, and with the encouragement the government is giving to local companies, who says Weco could not become a multinational company?”