Olusola Bello
The Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) Limited has laid out key strategies critical for Nigeria to achieve the objective of the Decade of Gas initiative.
According to the company, it is imperative for Nigeria to leverage on its abundant gas resources to resolved the socio-economic issues bedeviling the nation which is the most critical goal of the initiative
Speaking at the just concluded 2022 Nigeria International Energy Summit (NIES) in Abuja, Philip Mshelbila, Managing Director, NLNG said there was need to develop policies and laws that would encourage investment in the gas sector and unlock its potential.
The managing director who as represented by Leye Falade, general manager, production, NLNG, eulogised the Federal Government for declaring Year 2021 to Year 2030 as the Decade of Gas initiative.
Outlining the strategies, Mshelbila said there was need to develop policies and laws that would encourage investment in the gas sector and unlock its potential.
He said there was also need to invest massively in gas infrastructure and strengthen Nigeria’s Gas Master Plan to reposition the sector.
The NLNG boss also called for the rehabilitation of the existing gas assets and pipelines to meet the increasing demand going forward.
Speaking concerning the nation’s gas reserve, he said: “We need to look at the issue around our reserves. We are now at 209.5TCF proven reserves. We have 600TCF of unproven reserves but we need to develop it to know the true size of our reserves to attract investment.”
“We also need to leverage our huge gas potential to accelerate power generation. Gas-to-Power is very important for us to solve lack of access to electricity,” he said.
Small and Medium Enterprises he said, should also be empowered to take advantage of the numerous opportunities that exist in the gas sector.
He said the last 30 year has been a thing of pride for the company on account of it has done, stating that when people talk about the company, they think about it much more around the value it has added in terms of economics.
“For the period it has been operating, which is about 22years, the company has generated revenue in excess of $116bn, paid over $ 6.5 billion as tax, shareholder dividend is over $16billion, paid to Federal Government as payment for gas feeds is in excess of $13bn. So these are what people remember us for,” he said.
“But for us, it is more about the value we create in keeping our environment clean, and this is what the NLNG would continue to do,” he said.
He disclosed that the company got into cooking gas business which it started advocating for in 2007. “It started by deploying 50,000 metric tons into the Nigerian market and progressively that number has been going up to the extent that last year the company hit 400,000 metric tons, which it produced and supplied to the domestic market.
Last year the board gave the company the go-ahead to increase the supply to 500,000 metric tons.
Cooking gas, he stated, reduces deforestation. “Charcoal is used by a number of women to cook food and this is part of what is contributing to emission.”
“So when we go back to our mission as a company that is helping to build a better Nigeria, we couldn’t see anywhere else that we could find expression than just helping to create cleaner fuel and saving lives.”
Saving lives, because statistics indicate that every year about 100,000 Nigerians die from emissions. He stated that this role the company would continue to play, stating further that it makes it feel proud of building a better Nigeria.
Last year, the company signed three sales and purchase agreements (SPAs) for NLNG to be deployed into the domestic market. This is aimed at increasing the consumption of domestic gas and LNG, he said.
“We are doing this because we recognize that the more we do it, the more we reduce the issue of emission and the more we continue to transit. This is on the macro level. When you come to the micro-level, even in the plant itself, we have our greenhouse target, we have greenhouse energy management plan that spells out critical milestones that are reported to the board where we are measured. We have the flaring target that we have been monitoring over the years on a continuous basis, it is continually reduced. But when marked against other companies, we are trailing well below what the global level is.”
The NLNG boss said the company will continue to employ technology to continue to reduce emissions further.
As a company, he said: “The mission was to have a company that would help to reduce emission, help decarbonise the country, and we stay through to the vision, but we recognize it is vision that is bigger than us.
“So for the next 30 years, we have started scouting studies and we are looking at train 8. But the way we are looking at train 8 is not the conventional way of just increasing capacity, but the one that helps us reduce our overall greenhouse gas emission as a plant.”
On his part, Mr Ed Ubong, President, Nigeria Gas Association, said the challenges facing the industry included multiple taxation, infrastructure deficit, security, pricing and regulatory framework.
He expressed optimism that the passage of the Petroleum Industry Act would address some of these challenges and attract more investment to the sector.