It was a moment of glory for Total at the just-concluded 10th Offshore West Africa Conference and Exhibition (OWA 2006) as the company shone like a thousand stars at the Awards Ceremony held on Thursday, March 16, 2006 to mark the end of the Conference with two of the company's staff, Engr. Olubunmi Obembe and Olamide Falade and a sponsored participant, Chinedu Onyeizu making a clean sweep of all the awards available.

Engr. Olubunmi Obembe, General Manager (Procurement and Contracts) who set the tone of the Conference with his paper on "Local Content Development in Nigeria - Towards a Systems Approach" went home with the Best Presenter Award while Olamide Falade, an engineer in the Drilling and Completions Department won the Best Presentation award for the lucidity of her presentation titled, "Amenam/Kpono Completions: Intervention-less Monobore Technology - Challenges, Design and Lessons Learnt on Oil Producers, Gas and Water Injector Wells". Mr. Chinedu Onyeizu, a Masters student of the University of Port-Harcourt who was sponsored to the Conference by Total under its Capacity Building Programme won the award for the Best Young Engineer for his innovative paper, "Geographic Information System (GIS) Model for Evaluating the Vulnerability of the Environment in a Coastal Oil Field".

This year's performance by Total was our best showing ever in the ten year history of the Conference. Indications that Total will be the envy of all at the Conference emerged on Wednesday, 15th March, the second day of the Conference when Total dominated the show, literally becoming the talk of the Conference with our staff presenting a total of ten papers, the highest by any of the participating entities. Significantly, many of the presenters were young Nigerian professionals, a testimony of the company's commitment to developing its young human resource.

The day had started with the entire morning session devoted to Total's Akpo project with four technical papers presentations focusing on such topics as "Akpo Nigeria: From Seismic Interpretation to Geomodel" by Timothy Itiola and Bruno Michel; "Akpo Field: Complex Deep Offshore Well Design to Optimise Recovery" by Ihedi Ojukwu and Sebastien Bourgoin; "Akpo Subsea Systems: Deepwater High Targets" by Edward Kalu, Stuart Nelson and Benoit Ludot; and "Local Content in Deepwater Development: The Akpo Project Case" by Engr. Obi Iloanusi. The session was chaired by Mr. John Addeh, General Manager (Public Affairs) who is also chairman of the OWA Advisory Board. Mr. Yomi Orenuga later gave Total's Perspective of Gas Development in Nigeria focusing on the Obite and Omoku IPPs to be developed by the company.

The afternoon session was not any different while Jean Gavalda was thrilling his audience on the Optimization of Mud Weight Window by Reducing Equivalent-Circulating Density in Deepwater Area in the Acasia Room of the Conference, the HSE session in the Tamarind Room featured presentations by Felix Ndinemenu on "Upomami (OML 57) Well Securing Campaign"; Contractors' Health Safety and Environment Management: A Major Challenge in the OGP Companies" by Jacob Ologe and Onyeizu's award-winning paper on the GIS Model for Evaluating the Vulnerability of the Environment in a Coastal Oil Field. The day was capped by Olamide Falade, who held her audience spell-bound with her equally award-winning presentation on the Amenam/Kpono Completions.

After the opening formalities on Tuesday, 14th March, Engr. Olubunmi Obembe had the singular honour of presenting the conference's first paper on Local Content in Nigeria. Engr. Obembe's incisive paper was well received by the capacity-filled hall.

This year's conference is the tenth in the series and the fifth to be held in Nigeria. The 11th Conference has also been scheduled for Abuja from the 21st - 23rd March, 2007.

The images below capture the award presentation.

Engr. Obembe won the Best Presenter Award	Mr. Ngoka receiving the award on behalf of Mr. Obembe
Ms. Falade won the Best Presentation Award	Mr. Kolawole also received on behalf of Ms. Falade
Chinedu Onyeizu, a student sponsored by EPNL won the Best Young Engineer Award