On February 15, 2015, members of the Irish music scene gathered in Dublin to pay their last respects to Michael Quinn, a long-time music impresario. Quinn was a well-known and colourful character. He partied and hob-knobbed with the who’s who in music, from the American band ‘The Supremes’ to the Irish folk band ‘The Dubliners’, until his death. Yet, it wasn’t the music stars who really attracted attention at the funeral; it was the large number of Nigerians in attendance, along with a Nigerian TV crew, that turned the heads of those gathered to say their farewells to Quinn.

Nigeria has, of course, seen its fair share of larger-than-life characters, but Michael Quinn deserves an honourable mention on any list. His rock-n-roll heritage led to a career in business, commodities, project management, and involvement in some of Nigeria’s most ambitious – and controversial – infrastructure deals of the past 30 years.

Quinn may be best known in Nigeria for being the co-founder of P&ID, involved in a gas flaring project that collapsed following the Nigerian government’s failure to uphold the terms of the agreement. This has led to Nigeria’s most difficult overseas investor challenge in its history: namely, the world’s largest arbitration award of over $9.5 billion.

What’s not really understood by most Nigerians is the full story on Michael Quinn – and his business partner, Brendan Cahill – and their business adventures here in Nigeria. BWN set out to investigate their business exploits, spanning Nigeria, Ireland, the British Virgin Islands, Cyprus and the United Kingdom, among others.

Where It All Began: ‘The Butanisation’ Project

BWN has established that Quinn and Cahill ran an international consulting company called Industrial Consultants (ICIL).

They got their first real start in Nigeria having won a contract from NNPC to establish Africa’s first-ever gas pressure vessel manufacturing facility – including installation at nine sites across Nigeria – known as the “Butanisation Project.”

In the early 1990’s, NNPC wanted to capture the Butane gas produced throughout the country at the oil refineries. Their plan was to install 1,000 tonne high pressure vessels at 9 sites across Nigeria with a total of 48 individual vessels to store this Butane.

At the time, the NNPC envisaged that international vessel manufacturers in the West (Europe, US) would tender for and export completed vessels into Nigeria. However, Quinn and Cahill had other ideas. They wanted to build the vessels in Nigeria. But they faced steep challenges in doing so, including the challenge of identifying qualified workers (welders and engineers) with the necessary skills.

To overcome this challenge, they pursued a technology transfer partnership with Babcock Robey, a long-established UK company, to consider setting up a factory, bringing in world-class welders and manufacturing the vessels in Nigeria whilst training up an entire cadre of Nigerian welders and engineers. This was not ordinary welding – an explosion at such a vessel would be devastating.

The technology transfer arrangement with Babcock Robey agreed that after completion of the project the factory and equipment would remain operative in Nigeria. As a direct result of that technology transfer, there are now a number of indigenous manufacturers in Nigeria, not only of pressure vessels, but of many other associated products used across the entire oil and gas industry. This industry as a whole is now worth billions of dollars to the Nigerian economy.

This technology transfer strategy would later become a signature strategy of the Quinn and Cahill approach to doing business in Nigeria.

Read concluding article here: https://businesspost.ng/2019/07/09/meet-two-men-that-got-9bn-court-judgment-against-nigeria/

dipoolowoo:
On February 15, 2015, members of the Irish music scene gathered in Dublin to pay their last respects to Michael Quinn, a long-time music impresario. Quinn was a well-known and colourful character. He partied and hob-knobbed with the who’s who in music, from the American band ‘The Supremes’ to the Irish folk band ‘The Dubliners’, until his death. Yet, it wasn’t the music stars who really attracted attention at the funeral; it was the large number of Nigerians in attendance, along with a Nigerian TV crew, that turned the heads of those gathered to say their farewells to Quinn.

Nigeria has, of course, seen its fair share of larger-than-life characters, but Michael Quinn deserves an honourable mention on any list. His rock-n-roll heritage led to a career in business, commodities, project management, and involvement in some of Nigeria’s most ambitious – and controversial – infrastructure deals of the past 30 years.

Quinn may be best known in Nigeria for being the co-founder of P&ID, involved in a gas flaring project that collapsed following the Nigerian government’s failure to uphold the terms of the agreement. This has led to Nigeria’s most difficult overseas investor challenge in its history: namely, the world’s largest arbitration award of over $9.5 billion.

What’s not really understood by most Nigerians is the full story on Michael Quinn – and his business partner, Brendan Cahill – and their business adventures here in Nigeria. BWN set out to investigate their business exploits, spanning Nigeria, Ireland, the British Virgin Islands, Cyprus and the United Kingdom, among others.

Where It All Began: ‘The Butanisation’ Project

BWN has established that Quinn and Cahill ran an international consulting company called Industrial Consultants (ICIL).

They got their first real start in Nigeria having won a contract from NNPC to establish Africa’s first-ever gas pressure vessel manufacturing facility – including installation at nine sites across Nigeria – known as the “Butanisation Project.”

In the early 1990’s, NNPC wanted to capture the Butane gas produced throughout the country at the oil refineries. Their plan was to install 1,000 tonne high pressure vessels at 9 sites across Nigeria with a total of 48 individual vessels to store this Butane.

At the time, the NNPC envisaged that international vessel manufacturers in the West (Europe, US) would tender for and export completed vessels into Nigeria. However, Quinn and Cahill had other ideas. They wanted to build the vessels in Nigeria. But they faced steep challenges in doing so, including the challenge of identifying qualified workers (welders and engineers) with the necessary skills.

To overcome this challenge, they pursued a technology transfer partnership with Babcock Robey, a long-established UK company, to consider setting up a factory, bringing in world-class welders and manufacturing the vessels in Nigeria whilst training up an entire cadre of Nigerian welders and engineers. This was not ordinary welding – an explosion at such a vessel would be devastating.

The technology transfer arrangement with Babcock Robey agreed that after completion of the project the factory and equipment would remain operative in Nigeria. As a direct result of that technology transfer, there are now a number of indigenous manufacturers in Nigeria, not only of pressure vessels, but of many other associated products used across the entire oil and gas industry. This industry as a whole is now worth billions of dollars to the Nigerian economy.

This technology transfer strategy would later become a signature strategy of the Quinn and Cahill approach to doing business in Nigeria.

Read concluding article here: https://businesspost.ng/2019/07/09/meet-two-men-that-got-9bn-court-judgment-against-nigeria/

I don't think this project took off