Page 10 - AfrOil Week 43 2022

AfrOil PROJECTS & COMPANIES AfrOil

Additionally, NLNG said that the declaration of with 49%; Shell (UK), with 25.6%; TotalEnergies
force majeure had not affected deliveries of LPG (France), with 15%; and Eni (Italy), with 10.4%.
to Nigeria’s domestic market. (The consortium State-owned NNPCL serves as operator of the
is a key supplier of LPG, or cooking gas, to local group.
consumers.) The consortium brought its first production
It added that it would “continue to monitor train on stream in 1999 and now has six pro-
the situation with upstream gas suppliers” and duction trains capable of turning out a total of
was “evaluating the impact of the flood on its 22.5mn tonnes per year. The complex’s installed
business.” It did not say when it expected to left capacity is set to rise to 30mn tpy as a result of
the declaration of force majeure. the Train 7 project, which calls for building
NLNG has been in production for more than a seventh production train that can turn out
20 years and is Nigeria’s sole exporter of LNG. 4.2mn tpy, as well as the debottlenecking of
Equity in the consortium is split between Nige- existing trains, which will add another 3.4mn
rian National Petroleum Co. Ltd (NNPCL), tpy of capacity. ™

Botswana seeks partners for

$2.5bn coal-to-liquid plant

BOTSWANA BOTSWANA is looking to find funding part- the government will start a national energy
ners for a $2.5bn plant to produce synthetic fuels usage study on November 1 to identify areas for
from coal, a plan rekindled by the energy crisis off-grid renewable energy sources, such as solar
playing out in Europe, according to Minerals and biogas, the minister said.
and Energy Minister Lefoko Moagi. Meanwhile, Sasol is searching for natural gas
The southern African nation has for nearly supplies to replace the coal it uses to produce
a decade discussed tapping its extensive coal fuels in an effort to lower the company’s envi-
resources to produce fuels in order to reduce ronmental footprint, Bloomberg notes.
dependence on costly petroleum product Sasol’s Secunda complex in Mpumalanga
imports, Bloomberg reports. That would fol- province of South Africa is the largest coal lique-
low the example of neighbouring South Africa, faction plant and one of the largest single emit-
which developed coal-to-liquids (CTL) technol- ters of greenhouse gas in the world. ™
ogy through Sasol.
Botswana’s efforts to realise the project have
accelerated since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,
the news agency writes. “Look at Europe, [which
is] sending vessels coming down to Africa to get
coal,” Moagi said in an interview. According to
the minister, a quick transition away from fossil
fuel isn’t practical, as many people’s livelihoods
depend on it.
“You have to balance between cleaner tech-
nologies, between ensuring that the carbon
emissions are reduced, but it can’t just be a clean
sweep,” he said
Bloomberg noted that this view echoes a
common argument in Africa, where many pub-
lic figures have railed against foreign financiers
who decline to fund projects that involve fossil
fuels even though the continent is only respon-
sible for about 3% of global greenhouse gas
(GHG) emissions.
The government first planned to own the
plant entirely but decided to invite private part-
ners after the project was prioritised in order
to grow the economy. Botswana, the world’s
second-biggest producer of diamonds, plans to
increase its energy mix to almost 40% renewa-
bles by 2036.
While seeking investors for the CTL project, Moagi hopes the CTL plant will cut fuel imports (Photo: Facebook/@lefoko.moagi)

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