President Muhammadu Buhari has said that Nigeria has moved a step closer to the nation’s dream of full utilisation of the nation’s abundant gas potentials.
Speaking Tuesday at the commissioning of the Integrated Gas Handling Facility and LPG Processing and Dispensing Plants built and operated by the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company, an Upstream Subsidiary of NNPC in Oredo, Edo State, President Buhari said: “The Oredo Integrated Gas Handling Facility and its associated NGLs depot will be delivering 240,000 metric tons of commercial grade Liquefied Petroleum Gas and Propane. It will also deliver about 205 million standard cubic feet per day of lean gas to the domestic market.
“In addition to its import substitution benefits that brings us a step closer to self-sufficiency in LPG production and also supporting the growth of small and medium enterprises in the host communities, this project will create hundreds of direct and indirect employment opportunities for our teeming youths (both skilled and unskilled).”
“Apart from being the largest onshore LPG plant in Nigeria with the potential of supplying about 20% of Nigeria’s LPG demand, the Oredo Integrated Gas Handling Facility was carefully situated at a corridor proximate to over 80% of Nigeria’s LPG demand source,” he added.
The President remarked that the project was a follow-up to the commitment of the administration towards making Year 2020 as Nigeria’s Year of the Gas:
“At the turn of the Year 2020, this Administration made solemn declarations to the Nigerian public over its plans to expand the gas sector footprints by scaling-up the development and utilisation of Nigeria’s abundant Natural Gas Resources to help spur industrialization, provide clean and efficient energy for transportation and household use while increasing our exports into the international market. It is on the backdrop of this commitment that the Year 2020 was dedicated and embodied as Nigeria’s Year of Gas.”
“Since then, we have followed through with actions that have translated those plans into tangible projects with monumental value additions to the Nigerian Economy. We accomplished key gas infrastructure projects like the OB3 and ELPS 2 and flagged-off the Construction Phase of the 614 km AKK Pipeline Project,” President Buhari added.
The President noted that “It was indeed not a coincidence that the completion and commissioning of the aforementioned gas infrastructure projects in this Year 2020 followed the wrap-up of Year 2019 with the Final Investment Decision (FID) for NLNG Train 7…We are exiting Year 2020 with yet another milestone of commissioning the Oredo Integrated Gas Handling Facility LPG Processing and Dispensing Plants which will also support the on-going drive towards providing alternative auto fuel under the National Gas Expansion Program initiative.”
In his remarks, the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylva, noted that the project highlights the commitment of NNPC in eliminating gas flares while increasing Nigeria’s value realisation from gas.
He added that the entire LPG and propane production is “targeted at the Nigerian market, further affirming the conscious efforts of NNPC and the Nigerian government in growing its participation in the LPG value chain to boost domestic supply, lower prices and deepen LPG penetration to safeguard our environment.”
The Group Managing Director of NNPC, Mele Kyari, said the President’s clear directives to the Ministry of Petroleum Resources and the NNPC were that “we must deepen domestic gas utilisation and monetisation and provide a platform where Nigerians can benefit from the enormous gas supplies that we have so that job and prosperity can be created and by implication, bring peace to the country.”
He added that “the facility was designed, constructed and delivered with the highest application of Nigerian content and the contractor is a wholly Nigerian company which demonstrated the capacity of Nigerian companies to handle ‘complex’ projects.”
An elated Engr. Mansur Sambo, Managing Director of NPDC said that over two million-man hours was put into the project with zero casualty of workers.
“This is a project that will bring a significant change to our incomes in NPDC, and to the environment because we are taken away substantial amount of gas that would have been flared.”
“We have already started operation by selling in earnest. So we want to be ahead of our competitors by making the environment more conducive for our customers because before now, gas lifting was from Lagos and this will be ease the gas traffic congestion we have in Lagos” he said.
He said because of the new IGHF dispensing unit one could easily load a tanker from Benin and deliver it to Abuja or other distant places noting that this would naturally bring down the cost of cooking gas in the country.
On the issue of gas flaring, Sambo said NPDC has drastically reduced the percentage of gas flaring to a minimum level far below the national average of about nine percent.
Built to process over 200mmscfd of natural gas to the standard accepted by the West Africa Gas Pipeline (WAGP), the NPDC’s IGHF is able to deliver processed lean gas to the domestic market through a viable gas spur line to the Escravos-Lagos Pipeline System -ELPS.
The IGHF via its LPG Storage and Dispensing Unit, dispenses at full throughput about 330 tonnes of LPG per day which is technically equivalent to 16 standard LPG trucks or 20 tonnes, and 345 tonnes or 17 trucks of propane into the domestic gas market.
Analysts aver that the projected supply of 26, 400 cylinders of 12.5 kilograms (kg) of LPG daily to homes in Benin and its environs, will equally bridge existing supply gaps in the local LPG market. This will potentially force down the price of LPG in Benin and make it affordable to most people thus supporting government’s aspiration to make LPG a preferred domestic fuel source.
Locally, the facility is expected to impact on Nigeria’s power sector and domestic LPG market, in addition to progressing the fortunes of its host communities. There are nearly 350 skilled and unskilled personnel that would benefit from the facility.
