Internship Summary, Essay Example

Week 1:

I arrived in Port Harcourt around 11 a.m. I was picked up from the airport by the camp driver that had police escorts in front and behind of us. Due to the inclement weather and traffic, the drive from the airport was about an hour.  When we arrived at the camp, the first thing that I noticed was that the area was very well secured. Drivers had to show identification and documentation prior to entering the camp. My next surprise was the fact that my apartment was luxurious; it was beautifully arranged. After having lunch at my new apartment, I was driven to the main office. While there, I met with human resource designees to complete necessary paperwork and receive my “local allowance for the month of June (Nigerian Naira). I was then taken by the HR designees to have an ID made. This was needed in order to have access to buildings and other restricted areas. Without a pass I would only be able to access the gym and restaurants.

Once I arrived back to the main office, I meet the Academy Chief. The purpose of the Academy Chief is to train all new employees in reference to safety issues. There I meet Mr. Clement, who greeted me with a smile and hug. I was very surprised by the hospitality. He then introduced me to one of the security and safety workers. The safety worker then presented an hour long presentation that consisted of 14 major points regarding safety. One major point was being properly clothed. He stressed the importance of being mindful of other workers and having their safety interest in mind at all times. When this is done properly by each worker, injuries are reduced. The company operates under the following five aspects.

1. Quality – the Company works under the total quality management policy. They are trying to minimize the errors that occur during some processes or works. Once you see there is a mistake made, you need to “take 5 steps back and take 5 minutes”. By that they mean you leave what you have done go back five steps, take five minutes to look what you did wrong and how you can correct the error.
2. Health & Safety -the Company takes great pride in the employee’s safety and health. Within the camp there is a clinic with high-level doctors to whom you may go in case you need assistance. Also, all incidents must be reported even if no personal injury is sustained. One needs to complete the necessary forms and pass them on to the Health & Safety department as soon as possible.
3. Environmental – the Company takes special precautions when it comes to environment. They use electric cars or bicycles to move around the camp. Also, they installed lights on the streets that use solar energy to function.
4. Stop Work Authority – as an employee of the company, one is responsible and authorized to stop any work that does not comply with Intels operational procedures and policies and there will be no repercussions. Do the operations safely or not at all. Make time to do it safely every time.
5. No Alcohol & No Drugs – the company is very strict when it comes to the alcohol and drugs policy. A person MUST not drink during working hours, but a person can drink after he/she finished with the working hours. If a person gets intoxicated and causes an accident that person gets fired immediately. On the other hand, drugs are STRICTLY prohibited and there are random examinations every so often to ensure all employees are working drug free. If someone has drugs in their system, they get fired immediately. No exceptions.

Likewise, the company is also operating under their own safety system, which they called P.A.U.S.E. (think safety)

P -plan each task

A -analyze what might happen

U -Unexpected events (be prepared)

S – sprains; slipping and tripping housekeeping, attention & correct posture

E -entanglement beware of fingers, pinch-point, body position.

Once the training was complete, I was escorted back to Mr. Clemet’s office to discuss the policiesand ask any needed questions for clarity. Next, I was taken to tour the heliport and fire station. I met members of the fire department and other colleagues.  . One of the firemen explained what to do, where to go, and how to recognize the emergency of fire. Finally, having finished the presentation on what to do in case of fire, another employee of the fire department showed me two different fire trucks explaining to me the role of each one of them.

When we finished with the fire department, I went back to the safety department with my supervisor to consolidate everything. Also, my supervisor gave me a company’s phone that I am entitled to use in case I need anything (emergencies etc.). My first day finished with the meeting with my supervisor. My working hours are from 8:00AM-6:00PM from Monday through Saturday and on Sunday I work from 9:00AM-12:30PM.

There are a thousand people living in the camp and there are new buildings currently under construction. They are also building a hotel and a nice restaurant for the clients to be close to their ports and segments, instead of residing in a hotel in the city center or somewhere even further from their segment. The camp is 2.5km long.

During my second day of work, my supervisor took me to the port where I was able to see the stacking area, which is divided in common stacking area and dedicated stacking area. In the dedicated stacking area Intels‘ clients have their own space, which they rented under contract and where they stack their materials. Each of the areas is highly protected with fences and military guards. The common stacking area, on the other hand, is where clients that do not have their ‘private’ space stack the cargos and load them. The entire terminal, including the stacking areas, is under the Free Zone.

Free Zone is when you do not have to pay customs for the merchandise you have delivered to the port. In this way Intels’ clients save money since they put the cargo they received in the appropriate stacking area and they do not pay for it until they need it. Once they need something from the stacking area they go to the customs to declare the merchandise they are going to take and then they pay for it and are free to use with it in the state of Nigeria. DMS is the agent for the free zone.

Here, I will reiterate some of the most important issues.

Step 1:

You have to inform the NPA (Nigerian Port Authority) that the ship is coming to the port. The NPA and the Agent make documents for the ship. The agent also has to pay to the NPA a provisional bill for cargo vessels.

Step 2:

The port receives the ship enter notice (SEN). The port receives the cargo manifest at least 10 days before the ship’s arrival. There are three documents that go to the shipping manager. The shipping manager puts the information written on the cargo manifest into the company’s system. The system then gives us automatically a cargo summary.

1. Commercial cargo
2. Oil&Gas cargo
3. Determine free zone cargo

Afterwards, a new document is issued that is called the provisional discharging report (PDR) that represents the abstract of the cargo manifest.

Step 3:

There is a meeting with the ships agent concerning where the ship will dock and how the crew will unload and handle everything on board. Once they figure out all of these things a copy of the meeting goes to the terminal.

Step 4:

While the ship is on its way, the employees are preparing the terminal with trucks, cranes etc., and contacting the client.

The ships agent needs to pay PCF (perform invoice, port concession foreign/stevedoring + NPA cargo dues)

Step 5:

The ship arrives. Every single package or cargo is being measured and the tally sheet is being issued. The tally sheet has to be added to the OTR in order for the cargo to be discharged and based on all of that the bill is being made.

Step 6:

The discharged cargo goes to the assigned terminal on the basis on the internal way bill (confirmation that the cargo has entered the assigned terminal area). The internal way bill is being issued by shipping.

Step 7:

The cleaning agent or forwarding agent pays the customs to declare that the cargoes have been imported to the country.

Step 8:

Support base operations:

• transfer of the goods (loading and unloading the trucks)
• bulking of liquid or dry materials/chemicals
• every job that is related to the supply industry
• rent of offices, houses and people
• in contact with the clients
• the agent in contact with the NPA
• materials go to the rigs, platforms, another city
• all the materials in the stacking areas can be used anywhere within the country

After my mentor explained all these processes we came back to the office so that I could draw myself a table diagram with how the operations work. It was rather complicated I admit.  Since I am completely new to all of these concepts of the oil and gas industry, it seemed very foreign to me initially. The next day we went to the port again and repeated some of the actions we did on the first and second day. When we came back to the office my supervisor let me settle down and told me to go through the things we saw.  We discussed the information and then I revised my plan. Finally, we went over it all over again.

On Thursday my supervisor took me once more to the port and terminal area, but this time the stay was much shorter. We went to the FLT offices where he introduced me to the shipping, stevedoring- where the bills are issued and all other operational services that are situated in the terminal. Besides meeting all the employees, he also showed me big pictures that can be found on each floor of the building. Some of the pictures show all kinds of ships used to build or situate a rig or a well. Other depictions show exactly how everything works under water-how the robots put together all the pipes and how the drilling underwater works.

All these images that I was able to see were very educational since I have never seen all these ships, and how everything works underwater. The pictures can also be very educational for the workers since every single image is explained thoroughly. Furthermore, we went to see the agency in which the employers monitor the ships among other things they do. An agent is a person in a port that represents the ship’s owner and does the jobs in his name. They take care of the ships since a ship is considered a cargo vessel until it enters and registers in the waters of the country it entered (these case Nigerian waters). Once it registers, the ships become a supply vessel and it is able to travel through the Nigerian waters and it can stop at a jetty. Also once a ship becomes a supply vessel it can travel without pilot age. There is also a compulsory pilot age bill for supply boat: utilization of the water ways of the economic zone of Nigeria (navigating through the river from the ocean to a port is billed according to tariffs).

There are two types of ship agents. Owner agents: representing the owner of the ship. Charter agents: if the owner of the ship gave his or her ship in rent that ship is represented by an agent of the NPA.If a ship does not have a contract with the company, that ship had to do an advanced payment in order to navigate through the river. You are not leaving the port until you pay all your bills (you need to receive a green light by the NPA). Also, the company’s agency is an agent to the NPA therefore they are the ones who do the jobs that the NPA are supposed to do. They did so because the NPA is not so efficient by themselves while putting the company’s men to work for the NPA is both effective for the company as it is for the port authorities.

On Friday I went to the BMI, which stands for Business Marketing Intelligence. This department is the marketing department. They are the ones that besides marketing do innovations and statistics in the company. Their big project now is to incorporate all the handling functions into tablets. In this way the old way of writing everything on paper would be completely eliminated. This would lead to better overall performance of the firm by eliminating misplacing items.

Large clients that they manage feel threatened by the company because they are completely in the company’s hands so they cannot see exactly what is happening with their materials unless they ask the company to give them the report. Also, some clients like to see the report daily, some weekly, and some monthly-which can get complicated for a company that is managing so many clients. So what they did with this new project is simplifying the work for them. They also made the option available for their clients. Clients can download this application made for them, log in and check where, when, what, and how something was moved and how much it cost. The clients are also able to see their stacking area through apposite cameras. With this tool, clients can see what is being done with their merchandise daily.

The project is divided in three phases:

1. When the ship arrives with the cargo and the unloading of the ship
2. Movement of the materials to the terminal

• Movement of the materials from the terminal to the ship to go to the rig

They started doing the project backwards, meaning starting with point three. They finished point three already and it is already in function. Phase two will be done by the end of July and that is when they are going to start with phase one that is planned to be finished by the end of this year. The BMI department started doing that because the main aspect clients want to see is where and how much of their materials cost.

Luckily, I was able to attend a meeting with them to understand more deeply what they exactly do. In the meeting they discussed the issues that the department is encountering concerning their project. The problem that they have is that they do not know how to link these three parts together without repeating the same information. For example, when the ship arrives and they have to unload it the people working at the port must take a report on everything regarding the cargo (the same as the cargo manifest) and make a bill. The same thing the people at the stacking area must do. So the issue that BMI is having with the new project is how to avoid the repeating of information in all three sectors.

Furthermore, they want to implement tags that would be found on every single tube, or whatever they get and scan it. With this scan all the “life” of that tube would be showed on the tablet (where was it manufactured, length, weight, who ordered it). This would minimize errors made by people and therefore improve the company’s efficiency.

Later that afternoon I went to commercial, which is where my internship will be held. The commercials’ office is divided in groups of teams. Each team has its own client that they take care of, report to, and find out information from. The commercial’s job is to take care of the client, go and interact with the client. Every month the teams need to write a report that cover all the old and new information about the client. Where their main office is situated, the history of when the client first arrived to Nigeria, their biggest accomplishments, where they rigs are situated and which blocks do they own.

Finally, I went to the Commercial managers’ office who explained all these things to me and how important their department is. Without their department there would not be clients because they are the ones who do the interactions and make contracts with them.

Also, I was able to attend their weekly meeting as well. The meeting was attended by all the members of the teams including, the manager of the commercial department. They all sit at the table and each team tells the pros and cons of their client- what they were able to accomplish and what they need advice on. The meeting overall was very interesting and educational, but it was too much information to get at once since every team has different backgrounds. Understanding fully what commercials do and how it works is going to take a little bit more time. Therefore, I will definitely learn almost everything I need to know once I start working on the Shell team next week.

Week 2:

Today I came to work and I sat down with my team. The leader of the team gave me a brief introduction about the Shell Company. He also gave me Aprils’ report so that I can have an idea of what the client owns and what major projects it has. Shell has been working in Nigeria since the 1930’s. They own 3 blocks where they can do the discovering (drilling) and they are partners with other oil companies on 3 other sectors.

They are a very successful company; however there are several issues with them.

In the earlier years Intel’s made a contract with Shell in which Shell agreed on the fact that Intel’semploys their own workers to work for Shell and that only those people that are at the top would be Shell people. Along with this they agreed on making a KPI (Key Performance Indicator). In the KPI they divided the roles for which are solemnly up to Intel’s and which are completely up to Shell. Some of the roles that are up to Intel’s include: safety, security, health environmental, vessel turnaround time at Onne and materials on time. All these factors are put into a table and every single one of them has a percentage value. The agreement was that once Intel’s arrives to the target of the percentage and goes above it for two consecutive months they would get a compensation of Shell of 5%. If Intel’s fails in doing so for two consecutive months or one month they fail, the next one they succeed and the third one they fail again, they have to give a sort of penalty percentage to Shell of 3%.

This contract has been signed in 2010 and everything was working fine with it up until now. Shell is saying that this KPI is not valid anymore and that they do not want to continue this. Also, Shell wants a horrendously large amount of discounts, which is not possible to make and that is the reason why the contract for this year is going to be signed sometime in June. With the contract problem the Shell team also deals with the problem of the KPI. They want to propose a new KPI system to Shell once they sign the contract because it comes of profit to Shell and to the company. They want to change the KPI structure because the actual one that they have is pretty old and because they need to change some values and understand better how this KPI was formatted.

Furthermore, we went to the Shell base at the terminal.There I had a meeting with the AOM (assistant of the operational manager). He told me that SNEPCO (Shell Nigeria Exploration and Production Company) is a division of Shell specialized in exploration and drilling. Every material coming in the terminal from off-shore or going out from the terminal to the off-shore has to go through SNEPCO. SNEPCO has three locations off-shore: Bonga FPSO, Sea Eagle and Well Engineering Rigs. The Bonga FPSO and the Sea Eagle are production location while the Well Engineering Rigs carry the drill operation.

There are various departments in the Shell base:

1. QAQC – Quality Assurance, Quality Control

• Container rent out services, lifting and hasting main services.
• Cargo Carrying Units (CCU)
• Use the off-shore standard: BSEN (British Standard European Nation) 12079 or DNU 2-7-1. Every material must meet these standards in order to go offshore
• Make sure CCU is inspected every six months (at least)

2. R&D – Receive and Dispatch

• Receive materials from vendors, package it and send it off-shore
• In order to package the material it first has to meet the CCU standards

3. Warehouse – Where the materials are kept until they are needed off-shore

• Materials are numbered/labeled, organized on shelves/racks for easy accessibility
• Divided in: bonga, sea-eagle, well engineering, sub-sea

4. Yard -operations

• After packaging the material, people who work at the yard receive the cargo and their job is to transport the cargo to the quayside

5. Marine – The job of the marine people is to load the vessel and hand it over to the captain who then will lead the cargo off-shore

All these operations work hand in hand to make sure that materials off-shore are delivered and received. These operations go both sides depending on the need. It can go from the R&D step to off-shore but it can also go from off-shore to the R&D.

Following the QAQC there is also a check list, packaging list and manifest to be completed in order for the material to go to its final destination. The check list and the packaging list are put into the manifest, which presents all the information about everything that is loaded on the vessel.

6. HSE – Health, Safety and Environment

• Shell’s 12 Life Saving Rules

7. Control Room – Coordinates information

• Information center

8. Software – They use SAP (Systems Application and Products in Data Processing) only for Shell operations

• AX is used only for operations between Shell and Intel’s

9. Access Control – They go hand in hand with the security at the terminal

• Give access to visitors and whoever does not have an ID to come in

10. Meetings – Monthly business performance review meeting. In this meeting they invite vendors, look at the KPI, what has to be done to improve, and what are the challenges that they encounter. This meeting is not a lecture from the manager’s side but a participation meeting in which everyone says what they think

• Weekly HSE meeting
• MOM (Morning Operational Meeting)

After having this introduction to the base department of Shell my team and I went to the meeting for the big project that Shell has: the Bonga project. We came to the conference room, sat down with the guy representing the Bonga project and another guy that Represents Shell in the base. They started talking about going to the competitor for the pipe coating, but my team told them that they would not advise them to do so since that other company is not that good with pipe coating. They explained that all in a nice way so that they would not seem too aggressive towards the competitors. Going further into the meeting they talked about the pricing and how Shell does not have enough space in their actual stacking area and that they will most probably need an addition of stacking area regarding this project. Also the representative of the Bonga project said that some of the pipes will not need the coating and he kept on asking about the price. So what my team did is that they told him that the first thing he should do is put on paper how many pipes they are going to order, when will they arrive, and what is their size and weight. Once he puts all of that on paper he should forward it to the team and only then they will be able to make different proposals of the final cost. The representative said that he probably will not know exactly how many pipes they are going to need since there is always something that gets changed purposely or not. My team responded to that by saying that that does not matter that for now they need approximately the number and all the other measurements so that they can tell Shell the approximate amount of money they will have to pay for that. In this way Shell is going to be able to manage their budget. The meeting did not last too long because the representative of the Bonga project did not have any details about the material. All in all, the meeting went very well and Iinfer that a good deal will be made.

When the meeting was finished we had to go to the Prodeco base because there were some issues. Someone from the operational department of Shell ordered materials and a new warehouse (not the complete one, but the one that has only the roof) from a third party. The problem is that that order document had to go through different departments before reaching the Assistant General Manager who furiously declined this request because anything that is built in the camp and in the port that is under the Company’s concession has to be built by the Prodeco company. All constituents know this fact. So my team and I went to Prodeco to see if there was anything to do to get out of this predicament. Prodeco wants to help us get out of this predicament, but they do not know how. We proposed to them to buy the warehouse from the guy that is building it, so that once it’s completed it would meet standards. The third party who is building this warehouse also said to the people working at Prodeco that it is not possible to revert the order because they are already 90% done with the building. So, now they are still thinking on how to solve this problem.

What I have learned from my experiences is that some clients prefer to have a third party building their offices and warehouses because they are charging a lower price. However, what the clients do not think about is the quality. Prodeco imports all their materials from Europe; they have expatriates working for them which is why their prices are higher than the people producing these same things here in Nigeria. Furthermore, a lot of people in Nigeria are not educated to be engineers, which results in a bad quality of products.

Also, when we came back to the office my team gave me some exercises to do about billing a client according to the Industry Wide Standard Tariff prices. I made some mistakes with the calculations, but then my team explained to me how to do it and they told me that they are going to keep on working with me until I reach perfection.

The following day, we went to a meeting with the agents of the free zone (the D.M.S) so that they could explain to one of our clients (Cameron Valves) what it means to get a 75% Duty rebate on the 5% of Duty. What it means is that: once you get a pipe into the free zone, and you do coating or painting within the free zone you can get a 75% of rebate since you added value to the pipe. Meaning that even if you painted it or coated it the pipe is essentially still a pipe therefore you added value to it and you get a 75% of rebate once you bring it into the country. However, you cannot do that unless the government approves it. This process of them approving takes a lot of times, especially if the object in matter is not a pipe because some other kinds of objects are more difficult to explain. What Cameron Valves needs to do now is to do a very good presentation to show first to the D.M.S. and then the D.M.S. will tell them what is wrong about the presentation, so that they can improve and show the final thing to the government along with the application.

During the weekend I was in charge of doing a presentation for Maersk Drilling. Maersk Drilling came last year to Nigeria to get information from Intel’son how their systems work. Now, they are planning to come and invest in Nigeria having a quarter-base in Intel’s. For that reason, they assigned me to do a company profile about Maersk Drilling so that once the client comes they will have all the necessary information about their business and achievements.

Besides doing the presentation, my team also assigned me to sort out all the old documents that they have about Shell in appropriate groups. Our documents were in an old cabinet, so they told me I need to do it in order for us to relocate the documents in the new cabinets. So, I spent half of my Saturday and Sunday separating the piles of very old documents and looking through them to learn new (but old) things about the client. I had to put brochures on one pile, contracts on another, and other documents on a third.

Starting the new week we have encountered a new problem. Since here in Port Harcourt, spring and summer are extremely heavy rain seasons.  PCN’s (pipe coater Nigeria) warehouse got flooded and they immediately blamed Prodeco. It was wrong for their side to blame Prodeco because it was not their fault. Years before PCN came to that stacking area there was another company there which built the warehouse wrongly. Prodeco told them that they are building it incorrectly and that there is a good chance for that building to get flooded. Those people from the old company said that there is no problem and that they do not care. Therefore, Prodeco built the warehouse as they were told. Now, years later that blame is being placed on Prodeco. So what happened last week is that the entire street in front of PCN and the storage of PCN got flooded. They immediately started pointing fingers towards Prodeco saying that they should pay for that. The problem is that Prodeco cannot offer a permanent solution unless they bring the warehouse to the grounds and start building it up again, which is extremely costly for them since they should not be the ones who have to pay in the first place. Later, they came up with the idea of putting some kind of generators every 200m that will solve the problem temporarily. PCN agreed with this idea so Prodeco will start to build it in the next two weeks.

The next day’s meeting with the pipe coaters did not go smoothly as planned.

They said that they wanted Intel’s to pay the entire reconstruction for the new building. Of course that is impossible because it is not Intel’s job to do that considering the fact that when Intel’s expanded they offered a new terrain where they can move and build a new building. They declined that offer so theycertainly cannot blame Intel’s for the damage that is happening now due to the rain. Also, Prodeco and Intel’s want to finance these two machines that would be installed in PCN that would filter the problem. PCN knew that they offered to pay for it and they were aware that this installation would not solve the problem 100%, but only diminish it. For example, the place would not get flooded in 5 minutes rather in 45 minutes, enough time to evacuate everyone outside of the building. The problem with PCN is that Intel’s owns 60% of it while Tenaris owns the other 40% and they act as if they are not collaborators. PCN says the reason why they don’t want to move to the other area is because of the costs. First of all, Intel’s is giving them a part of their territory free of charge. Second of all, Tenaris would pay only 40% of the new construction while Intel’s is the one who would pay more for the rebuilding of PCN. The meeting finished without a conclusion.

I also visited Chevron’s base and I attended the meeting about the new technology getting incorporated into the overall system. The base called BMI and the commercials to come and present their idea so that they could understand better what is happening. When we came to the base we went to the conference room. There the people from the BMI gave the Chevron base a presentation/overview about this new idea they are incorporating in the operations of the company. After the presentation finished, people started asking questions. Most of those questions arose because people are very skeptical about this new technology, which is completely normal because everyone is skeptic whenever something new comes into the market. The aspect that I did not like during that meeting is that the people from Chevron started talking about ordinary problems they have with Intel’s even though that meeting was not about that at all. Second of all, people from BMI were there and these problems do not concern them because they do not even know about BMI business marketing

During the morning meetings, which we have to attend every morning at 8:30, our boss started talking about one of these teams has problems with Saipem. Saipem always makes problems or issues to Intel’s. Saipem did not pay the fees that they had to pay to NPA, so NPA some time stopped their work. Saipem had a depth of 4.5 million Naira. The error that the guy from the commercial made is that he sent an e-mail to Saipem saying that: “Your work will not be able to continue operating until you pay the amount of 4.5 million Naira”. The way that he approached the problem did not please the bosses. The reason for that is that he should not have told them that the operations would stop UNTIL they pay because it is not Intel’s who decides that, but NPA. Instead he should have replied with: “NPA has stopped your operations, please pay what you owe until then we will try to do everything possible to talk to NPA”. If he had replied in this way there would be no problem. We said that NPA are the ones to make major decisions. Second,  this way he would not give a limit on how much Saipem needs to pay in order to unblock their activities. If they offer NPA to pay 2.5million or 3 million is the NPA’s decision whether they will unblock them or they will keep their works firm until they pay the complete amount.

Prodeco organized a presentation about their history and about the future developments. They will start organizing this presentation every other Sunday and it is going to be mandatory. Twenty-five people will attend at a time. The presentation lasted for one full hour. The speaker spoke using a monotone voice. This was the culmination of my internship. I accumulated a great deal of knowledge from my experiences.