BEVERLY HILLS, December 22, (THEWILL) – President Buhari said Nigeria has moved a step closer to the nation’s dream of attaining self-sufficiency in liquefied petroleum gas production through the full utilisation of the nation’s abundant gas potentials.
The President made this known on Tuesday at the commissioning of the Integrated Gas Handling Facility and LPG Processing and Dispensing Plants built and operated by the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company, an Upstream Subsidiary of NNPC in Oredo, Edo State.
Buhari noted that his administration would support the on-going drive towards providing alternatives to auto fuel under the National Gas Expansion Program initiative.
Buhari in a statement by his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina said, “The Oredo Integrated Gas Handling Facility and its associated NGLs depot will be delivering 240,000 metric tons of commercial grade Liquefied Petroleum Gas and Propane. It will also deliver about 205 million standard cubic feet per day of lean gas to the domestic market.
“In addition to its import substitution benefits that brings us a step closer to self-sufficiency in LPG production and also supporting the growth of small and medium enterprises in the host communities, this project will create hundreds of direct and indirect employment opportunities for our teeming youths (both skilled and unskilled).”
“Apart from being the largest onshore LPG plant in Nigeria with the potential of supplying about 20 per cent of Nigeria’s LPG demand, the Oredo Integrated Gas Handling Facility was carefully situated at a corridor proximate to over 80% of Nigeria’s LPG demand source.”
The President remarked that the project was a follow-up to the commitment of the administration towards making Year 2020 as Nigeria’s Year of the Gas:
The President noted that “It was indeed not a coincidence that the completion and commissioning of the aforementioned gas infrastructure projects in this Year 2020 followed the wrap-up of Year 2019 with the Final Investment Decision (FID) for NLNG Train 7…We are exiting Year 2020 with yet another milestone of commissioning the Oredo Integrated Gas Handling Facility LPG Processing and Dispensing Plants which will also support the on-going drive towards providing alternative auto fuel under the National Gas Expansion Program initiative.”
The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylva, noted that the project highlights the commitment of NNPC in eliminating gas flares while increasing Nigeria’s value realisation from gas.
He said that the entire LPG and propane production was “targeted at the Nigerian market, further affirming the conscious efforts of NNPC and the Nigerian government in growing its participation in the LPG value chain to boost domestic supply, lower prices and deepen LPG penetration to safeguard our environment.”
The Group Managing Director of NNPC, Mele Kyari, said the President’s clear directives to the Ministry of Petroleum Resources and the NNPC were that “we must deepen domestic gas utilisation and monetisation and provide a platform where Nigerians can benefit from the enormous gas supplies that we have so that job and prosperity can be created and by implication, bring peace to the country.”
He said that “the facility was designed, constructed and delivered with the highest application of Nigerian content and the contractor is a wholly Nigerian company.”
He added that it demonstrated the capacity of Nigerian companies to handle ‘complex’ projects.
