Page 7 - AfrOil Week 49 2019

AfrOil PIPELINES & TRANSPORT AfrOil
Nigeria’s Axxela pledges to expand
West African gas transport infrastructure
NIGERIA
Gas, Gas Network Services and Gaslink Nige- ria. The latter operates a 140mn cubic feet per day (1.45bn cubic metres per year) distribution network with more than 100km of pipelines that supply gas to customers in the Lagos met- ropolitan area.
The company is also the first independent supplier of gas to West African Gas Pipeline Co. (WAGP), the operator of a 678-km regional network that consists of a trunk line connecting Nigeria’s Lagos-Escravos system to the Ghana- ian city of Takoradi and spurs extending to Tema, another city in Ghana; Lome, in Togo; and Cotonou, in Benin.
The capacity of the WAGP system amounts to about 484 mmcf per day (5 bcm per year).™
NIGERIA’S Axxela has pledged to continue working to expand its transportation network for natural gas in West Africa.
Tunde Baba-Agba, the company’s head of sales and marketing, said at the Ghana Gas Forum in Accra last week that Nigeria and other West African producers ought to use their gas to support industrialisation. Axxela’s projects are designed to promote this goal, he said.
“Natural gas is now highly regarded as a key resource of the energy sector and a key com- ponent geared towards value creation for West Africa’s economies,” he said. “We’re confident that our strategic initiatives and the expan- sion of our operational footprint – particularly within the virtual pipeline, gas processing and distribution, and embedded power spaces – will help unlock the vast potential within important economic clusters across the region.”
Baba-Agba’s words were echoed by Senam Gbeho, the head of the executive committee at the Gas Consortium and the organiser of the Ghana Gas Forum. Gbeho said he saw gas not only as a valuable resource but as a tool capa- ble of reducing poverty levels in West Africa. Countries in this region must take steps to introduce policies and establish agencies that support this aim, he said.
Axxela is one of Nigeria’s leading pri- vate-sector gas transport companies. It cur- rently controls more than 280km of pipelines through its main subsidiaries, Central Horizon
INVESTMENT
Algeria remains opposed to plan for sale of Anadarko assets
Gas Network Services is one of Axxela’s subsidiaries (Image: Axxela)
ALGERIA
ALGERIAN Energy Minister Mohamed Arkab said last week that Sonatrach, the national oil company (NOC), was opposed to a US partner’s plan to divest some of its assets.
Speaking to the state press agency APS, Arkab noted that Occidental Petroleum had already arranged to sell off some of the Algerian assets previously owned by Anadarko Petro- leum, a US company that it acquired earlier this year.
State-owned Sonatrach sees this deal as “incompatible” with current Algerian legis- lation, he said. As such, he commented, it will exercise its right to pre-empt the sale.
The minister was referring to a law recently passed by Algeria’s Parliament with the aim of increasing crude oil and natural gas production. The legislation is designed to support efforts to raise hydrocarbon yields in the country, but it also prevents foreign investors from acquiring majority shares in Algerian projects.
Occidental gained control over Anadarko earlier this year in a $55bn buyout deal. As part of the takeover, it agreed to sell the latter compa- ny’s assets in South Africa, Mozambique, Ghana and Algeria. Total has pledged to pay $8.8bn for these assets, but its efforts have met with some criticism.
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