Tony Attah, the Managing Director of the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) has disclosed that the oil and gas company plans to embark on a capacity development project valued at $6 billion.
Attah said the project has the potential of creating not less than 12,000 new jobs in the Niger Delta region of the country. The development project, according to him, is for the company’s Train 7.
Attah said
“The big deal for us in Nigeria LNG is growing capacity. Currently, we have six Trains with 22 million tonnes per annum capacity which is 7 percent of the global market share of LNG.
“We want to grow back to the 10 percent which was what it was before. So we want to grow by about 35 percent capacity before Australia.
“We want to grow by about 355 capacity, that will come via Train 7 project for which we have commenced the engineering design and we are looking forward to taking a final investment decision not too long.’’
Recall that the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Shell, Total and Eni have signed the front-end engineering design contract for the Train 7 of the NLNG.
The signing of the contract was done in London in July. The event witnessed the repayment of $5.45bn loan for Trains 1 to 6 by the NLNG shareholders. The company had sourced the principal amount of $4.043bn from its shareholders in their respective shareholding proportions to partly fund the construction of Trains 1-6.
Meanwhile, an investigative hearing is ongoing for the purpose of looking into the proposed sale of the company held by the House of Representatives Committee on Gas Resources.
The hearing was on the need to investigate the contract for modification of Escravos Gas Project (EGP) 3B production platform, following the joint ventures agreement between the NNPC and Chevron Nigeria Limited.
About NLNG
NLNG was incorporated as a limited liability company on May 17, 1989, to harness Nigeria’s vast natural gas resources and produce LNG and Natural Gas Liquids (NGLs) for export.
It is owned by four shareholders, namely, the Federal Government of Nigeria, represented by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) – 49%, Shell Gas B.V. – 25.6%, Total Gaz Electricite Holdings France – 15%, and Eni International – 10.4%.