- Govt. urges oil companies to boost gas supply to liquified natural gas plants.
- Joint partners Shell, Chevron, and NNPC had refused a third party transport of gas through their pipelines.
- At present, the NLNG can only produce at about 70 per cent installed capacity.
The Federal Government has urged the partners in the Nigeria Liquified Natural Gas (NLNG) project to allow the transport of third-party gas through its joint pipelines to increase the gas supply to the plant.
According to a statement by Horatius Egua, spokesman to the Minister of State Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylve, the plea came on Monday following the refusal of the joint partners, Shell, Chevron, NNPC, and others, to allow third parties to transport gas through their pipelines to the NLNG trains. Since this directive, the company has been unable to operate at optimum capacity, thus causing its inability to meet domestic and international gas obligations.
A report from Daily Trust noted that Sylva, in an audience with the new Italian Ambassador to Nigeria, Stefano De Leo, in Abuja, emphasised the need for the NLNG partners to relax their rules. “The issue we have with the existing NLNG trains is insufficient gas supply. The partners are running out of gas, and they are refusing a third party to supply gas to the trains. The partners insist that they can only allow a third party to provide gas to the plant if they agree to sell at subsidised rates. These people, of course, want to make money, and they cannot supply at subsidised rates, and that’s why the NLNG trains cannot produce at full capacity. The partners can afford to supply at subsidised rates because they are partners in the NLNG project, not the third parties. This is a very critical issue I want to discuss with the respective partners to see how we can resolve this problem so that we can increase the production capacity of the NLNG,” Sylva said.