Nigerian Venture To Distribute LNG to Industry, Hauliers
LNG is already marketed by truck to remoter parts of North America, Scandinavia and Spain that lack natural gas pipelines. Now the government in Nigeria is supporting a commercial venture that plans to do the same there.
Nigeria’s minister of state for petroleum Ibe Kachikwu attended the signing August 29 of a gas sale aggregation agreement with Abuja-based venture Greenville Oil and Gas Company. Under the agreement, up to 74mn ft3/d of gas will be delivered to Greenville’s mini liquefaction facility at Rumuji in Rivers State, the first of its kind in Nigeria, which cost $500mn to build.
The gas will be supplied to Greenville by the NNPC/Total production joint venture, and representatives of both the Nigerian state and France-based firms attended the signing. The liquefaction unit at Rumuji has capacity to supply 2,250 metric tonnes of LNG per day.
LNG from the unit will be trucked to various locations that currently lack access to the gas pipeline network. Greenville has purchased LNG transportation trucks and is currently constructing retail stations and secondary storage facilities across the country for logistics support.
The venture aims to develop local use of gas, as envisaged in the country’s new National Gas Policy.
Eddy Van Den Broeke, Greenville’s chairman, says plans are underway to expand the plant’s liquefaction capacity to 5,250 mt/d as the company strongly believes in the development of gas as an integral part of Nigeria’s industrialisation.
Liquefaction unit 'will start October at the latest'
Greenville representative Gokul Noothedathu told NGW August 30 that the plant is already built, although has yet to start up. Production will begin this October at the latest, he said, adding that LNG transportation trucks are already on site and will start delivering LNG to plants from the third week of October 2017. The current 2,250mt/d liquefaction unit is powered by its own dedicated 50MW gas-fired plant, so should not be affected by grid outages.
Greenville’s website says its aim is to distribute gas, in the form of LNG, to all parts of Nigeria for existing industries and to revive industries that have been crippled by a lack of power or that lack competitive power supply options. It also says that Greenville will promote the use of LNG-fuelled trucks in Nigeria by third parties, thereby cutting transport costs for hauliers, and will set up a number of LNG refuelling stations for the haulage sector.
A Lagos-based oil and gas analyst tells NGW that creating such a market might eventually open an additional sales niche later for export-focused Nigeria LNG which faces a supply glut and low prices on the international market. NNPC, Total but also Shell and Eni are shareholders in Nigeria LNG.
Even at full 5,250mn/d capacity, the Greenville project would equate to 1.9mn mt/yr -- relatively small compared to Nigeria LNG's 22mn mt/yr capacity.
Omono Okonkwo