Companies working with the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc) have until 31 March to obtain an in-country value (ICV) certification, according to one of the consulting firms advising the UAE oil major.

“Adnoc has allowed the companies to submit the self-certified ICV forms until 31 March and subsequent to this only ICV forms certified by one of the six certifying bodies appointed by Adnoc will be accepted,” said Nizar Jichi, head of Oil and Gas for UAE and Oman at KPMG.

"We have conveyed that [to the companies] already. They are all on track. There are different requests from different companies that have approached us,” Jichi told MEED.

Adnoc announced last month it was implementing a new structured localisation policy to realise its Vision 2030 goals of achieving operational efficiency, cost optimisation and generating value for the UAE economy.

As part of this new ICV policy, all technically shortlisted companies bidding for work with Adnoc across the value chain – including engineering contractors, oil field service providers, technology suppliers and equipment manufacturers, will be ranked in the order of their ICV scores which has to be based on their respective ICV certificates.

Companies do have the option of bidding for work with ADNOC without the ICV certificate, however in that case they will get a zero ICV score.

KPMG is one of the six advisers Adnoc recently appointed to work on the implementation of its ICV policy. MEED has learnt that the five other consulting and auditing firms are:

• Ernst & Young (E&Y)
• PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC)
• Baker Tilly
• Protiviti
• Ardent

Adnoc has been keenly evaluating the local content generation merits of the project bids it receives, particularly from engineering contractors.

The two engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contracts Adnoc announced awarding South Korea’s Samsung Engineering on 26 March were given out after careful evaluation of the ICV aspects of all bids it had received for the Ruwais refinery jobs.

“If you go to the big partners [of Adnoc] they are very serious about [following the ICV guidelines]. They sit down and want to see how they can increase the score. They are quite mindful of the deadline,” Jichi says.