Attacks on pipeline, a setback for oil, gas industry — NNPC
By Uthman Salami
The Chief Operating Officer, Oil and Gas unit of Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Mr. Yusuf Usman has lamented over recent series of attacks on the country’s rail lines, especially from Warri in Delta state to Itakpe in Kogi state, which he said had started using for haulage of pipes.
He noted that destruction of pipelines and the growing attacks on the rail lines by some disgruntled Nigerians remained a major challenge in its oil and gas as well as pipelines transportation efforts.
Usman explained that the incessant attacks on oil and gas facilities was a major setback for the industry.
According to him, “The Ajaokuta-Kaduna-Kano (AKK) project provides a lot of opportunities which have been given to the Engineering Procurement and Construction (EPC) contractors, about 300 km each. So it is an opportunity for local companies in the area of trenching and moving parts. It costs a lot to move 30 inches of 40km pipelines, which means we will deploy over 200 trucks.
“These trucks pick just about three pipes, so we have to look at other means or look at the alternative and the only thing we could do was to move the pipes from Warri to Itakpe.
“There are a lot of challenges with this. You saw what happened to the rail, that immediately after we moved a couple of pipes, somebody went and started cutting the lines. It’s part of the challenges,” he said.
Usman noted that with the announcement of a “decade of gas,” there was the need to put in place a masterplan to achieve the set objectives in the next 10 years.
He emphasised that having a clear roadmap as to what should be done in the area of moving the molecules, establishment of gas-based industries and utilisation of gas for transport.
He said that the government was making sure the entire infrastructure is in place to realise the aims of the declaration, stressing that stakeholders in the industry are working on building gas infrastructure throughout the country.
“There’s also the area of gas hubs. We have taken the FID for the phase 1 of the Brass project and what we intend to do in that area is to pump one 1bcf of gas and the phase one is just looking at 300mmsfd that will come with two methanol plants,” he added.
According to him, phase 2 of the project would come with condensate refinery, fertiliser plant, LNG plant and further offer deep offshore and onshore opportunities.
He added that “In the deep offshore, we are looking to do a couple of pipelines projects including expansion of work at the 36-inch pipeline across offshore to the deep offshore assets, moving gas from Nigeria to Morocco of over 4,000 km of pipelines. We are also looking in the direction of Equatorial Guinea. All those things require gas supply. The local companies must be involved.”
Meanwhile, the Managing Director, Shell Nigeria Gas, Mr. Ed Ubong, who also serves as the President, Nigeria Gas Association (NGA), stated that the company’s projects present several opportunities in-country, stressing that each time a customer is connected to the network, they spend about N100million in terms of connection work.
He said, “Hundred per cent of our contracts so far for 2020 and 2021 go to local Nigerian companies. There’s a lot of construction work going on in Port Harcourt, Aba and Badagry axis, where we are adding new customers.”
