In a joint effort to promote accessibility and affordability of cooking gas for consumers, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited and UTM Offshore Limited have signed a Heads of Terms Agreement on Thursday. The agreement outlines the terms of NNPC’s 20 per cent equity contribution in the UTM FLNG Project.
The signing ceremony, held at the NNPC corporate headquarters in Abuja, signifies the commitment of both companies to provide clean energy solutions for various purposes, benefiting Nigerians across the nation.
Mr. Julius Rone, the group managing director of UTM Offshore Limited, expressed the company’s dedication to reducing and stabilizing the price of cooking gas, making it more accessible to a broader spectrum of consumers.
He emphasised the benefits to include a healthier environment, investment opportunities and thousands of direct and indirect employment opportunities to Nigerians.
The front-end engineering design, FEED, is already on in Lagos, Yokohama and Paris with JGC, Technip and indigenous companies acting as consultants.
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Mr Rone emphasized how important that stage of the project is as it would enable UTMOL to have an idea about the project cost, prepare a full budget and work towards the FID, saying that the stage cannot be skipped.
“Final Investment Decision (FID) is expected to be taken in the fourth quarter of 2023 with planned Project start up in the fourth quarter of 2026. When completed, it will produce 1.7mmtpa of LNG and 300,000 metric tons of LPG (cooking gas) which will be fully dedicated to the domestic market.
The project is estimated to provide direct employment for 3,000 Nigerians and another indirect employment for an additional 4,000 people. The LPG produced will help bring down the price of cooking gas, improve the socioeconomic wellbeing of Nigerians, reduce deforestation, gas flaring and its attendant carbon emission,” he stated.
The facility, which will be located about 60km offshore at 64m water depth, will be built by reputable engineering companies – JGC of Japan and Technip of France, with the support of KBR as the Owners Engineer. It is worthy of note that the two contracting companies and KBR were the consortium that built the six (6) existing LNG Trains for Nigerian LNG Ltd.
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