The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has bemoaned the recent spate of attacks on the country’s rail lines, especially from Warri in Delta state to Itakpe in Kogi state, which the corporation had started using for haulage of pipes.
The national oil company noted that destruction of pipelines and the growing attacks on the rail lines by some disgruntled Nigerians remained a major challenge in its oil and gas as well as pipelines transportation efforts.
Speaking during a two-day Nigeria Oil and Gas Opportunity Fair (NOGOF) 2021, the NNPC’s Chief Operating Officer, Gas and Power, Mr. Yusuf Usman, explained that the development was a setback for the industry.
“The Ajaokuta-Kaduna-Kano (AKK) project provides a lot of opportunities which have been given to the Engineering Procurement and Construction (EPC) contractors, about 300 km each. So it is an opportunity for local companies in the area of trenching and moving parts. It costs a lot to move 30 inches of 40km pipelines, which means we will deploy over 200 trucks.
“These truck pick just about three pipes, so we have to look at other means or look at the alternative and the only thing we could do was to move the pipes from Warri to Itakpe.
“There are a lot of challenges with this. You saw what happened to the rail, that immediately after we moved a couple of pipes, somebody went and started cutting the lines. It’s part of the challenges,” he said.
Usman noted that with the announcement of a “decade of gas,” there was the need to put in place a masterplan to achieve the set objectives in the next 10 years.
He noted that this involves for instance, having a clear roadmap as to what should be done in the area of moving the molecules, establishment of gas-based industries and utilisation of gas for transport.
He noted that the corporation was making sure the entire infrastructure is in place to realise the aims of the declaration, stressing that the NNPC and its partners are currently embarking on building gas infrastructure throughout the country.
“There’s also the area of gas hubs. We have taken the FID for the phase 1 of the Brass project and what we intend to do in that area is to pump one 1bcf of gas and the phase one is just looking at 300mmsfd that will come with two methanol plants,” he added.
According to the top NNPC official, phase 2 of the project would come with condensate refinery, fertiliser plant, LNG plant and further offer deep offshore and onshore opportunities.
“In the deep offshore, we are looking to do a couple of pipelines projects including expansion of work at the 36 inch pipeline across offshore to the deep offshore assets, moving gas from Nigeria to Morocco of over 4,000 km of pipelines. We are also looking in the direction of Equatorial Guinea. All those things require gas supply. The local companies must be involved,” he said.
In his remarks, the Managing Director, Shell Nigeria Gas, Mr. Ed Ubong, who is also President, Nigeria Gas Association (NGA), stated that the company’s projects present several opportunities in-country, stressing that each time a customer is connected to the network, they spend about N100million in terms of connection work.
He stated that over 120 customers have been connected to the lines , adding that in the last two years , SNG has ensured that 100 per cent of contracts go to indigenous companies.
“Hundred per cent of our contracts so far for 2020 and 2021 go to local Nigerian companies. There’s a lot of construction work going on in Port Harcourt, Aba and Badagry axis, where we are adding new customers,” he said.
