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Attah urges NLNG to consider

expansion on a larger scale

AFRICA BODY Nigeria LNG (NLNG) should consider scale, adding nearly 30mn tpy of new capacity
more ambitious plans for expansion, accord- and bringing the country’s total production
ing to Tony Attah, the consortium’s managing capacity up from 77mn tpy to 126mn tpy.
director. Qatar’s ambitious moves indicate that NLNG
Speaking at a recent industry conference ought to aim higher, Attah commented.
hosted by the Nigerian Gas Association (NGA), To that end, he said, the consortium is ready
Attah reported that NLNG had already benefited to work with Nigeria’s government to support
the country’s economy by generating more than efforts to expand both gas production and
$100bn in revenues, $38bn in tax receipts and domestic gasification.
$35bn in dividends. “We offer ourselves as partners to the gov-
These figures are sure to grow once the group ernment, but most importantly, we say, we are
completes the Train 7 project, adding another available. If you can produce the gas, we can take
production train to its gas liquefaction plant on it,” he declared.
Bonny Island and raising its overall production Train 7 will not be the end of expansion
capacity to 30mn tonnes per year (tpy), he said. work at NLNG. The Nigerian government has
Nevertheless, he said, Nigeria – and NLNG, said before that the Bonny Island liquefaction
its only LNG producer – should learn from the plant may eventually have as many as 12 trains
example set by Qatar. in operation, and Mele Kyari, the group man-
He noted that the Middle Eastern state had aging director of Nigerian National Petroleum
begun producing LNG in 1997, just two years Corp. (NNPC), told reporters late last year that
before NLNG’s first production train came NLNG’s shareholders were already holding dis-
online. Since then, he said, Qatar has become cussions on the construction of Train 8.
the biggest LNG producer in the world, raising Equity in NLNG is divided between state-
its total LNG production capacity to 77mn tpy. owned NNPC, with 49%; Royal Dutch Shell
Nigeria, by contrast, has only pushed output up (UK/Netherlands), with 25.6%; Total (France),
to 22.5mn tpy. with 15%, and Eni (Italy), with 10.4%. The con-
The gap between the two countries is evident sortium’s members made a final investment deci-
in the difference between their expansion pro- sion (FID) on the Train 7 project last year.
jects, he added. This initiative envisions the construction
NLNG’s Train 7 project calls for raising the of a seventh production train that can turn out
Bonny Island plant’s capacity from 22.5mn tpy 4.2mn tpy, as well as the debottlenecking of exist-
to 30mn tpy, he noted, while Qatar’s North field ing trains, which will add another 3.4mn tpy of
expansion project will operate on a different capacity.™

P16 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 10 11•March•2021