Pipeline infrastructures key to successful implementation of ‘Decade of Gas’ — Usman

…As TotalEnergies urge FG to pay more attention to roads, security

By Gloria Akudoro

The Chief Operating Officer, Gas & Power, Nogerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Yusuf Usman has disclosed that critical infrastructures especially construction of pipeline remain central to the realization of decade of gas project.

He stated this  during a parley at the 2021 20th Anniversary of the Nigerian Oil and Gas (NOG) Conference and Exhibition in Abuja.

Usman said, “Pipeline infrastructure remains the most economical and most efficient way of building gas. Although, virtual pipeline is around but it’s just an intervention before critical pipeline infrastructure come in quote.”

He added that, “You know Decade of Gas has been declared and infrastructure is the key to realizing that project, using all available investments and then create modules that can help create infrastructure.”

While reacting to how far Federal Government has gone on AKK Project, Usman said that the project has since commenced in Abeokuta, Abuja, Kaduna and Kano.

He added that the project is “one of the most aggressive pipeline infrastructures ever embarked on, spanning 614 kilometers and we started that pipeline in the last two years. Construction is ongoing and we are rightly focus on that project.”

While explaining that the government has been responsible for funding even though there was scarcity of fund, he added that they had to be creative on how to get proper funding for the project.

In his words, “Today, we are building the AKK through debt and equity in financing and what we have done is to use cash flow of existing pipeline infrastructure to thrive.

“We have been able to structure financing and we are putting 15% equity we negotiated with debt providers to start using the money to put the pipeline in place,” he concluded

On her part, the General Manager Administration, Deepwater Asset, Maryam Bala Shehu who was representing TotalEnergies companies said focus should be paid more on the end user market.

She said the decision to “develop any gas is a value chain decision starting from the end part of the chain which is the end user market.

“It is critical that market development of gas utilization is taken seriously. Market needs to be developed, market needs to be deepened.”

She added that “There should be some decentralization of industries using gas and lots of awareness creation to enable companies that should normally be using gas but are not.

Shehu said, “Rather than dwelling on challenges, there are some solutions that we see that we like to pass across to the industry especially to the government.

“Today there is quite a lot stranded that the production of these fields will really need total use of virtual pipelines as regards to gas method. Which means we are going to have a lot of CNG trucks, LNG trucks and LPG trucks plying that road.”

While appreciating the government for paying a lot of attention to infrastructure, she charged them to focus more on how to ensure roads become solid enough to accommodate huge trucks that are plying the road especially LNG trucks.

She said, “We have also seen efforts that government is making regarding to development and rehabilitation of rail networks. Therefore, we recommend that rail network development should be optimized not just focused only on passengers’ road but optimized in such a way that cargo rail is considered in the road network so that lots of pressure can be taken off the road. Cargo rails can transport the LNG and the CNG from one location to the other.”

She further added that “it’s important to pay attention to security situation to ensure that people feel safe to take ports across destinations and to end user market.

“Generally, people should have good sense of security in the country to boost our business and industrialization  required to boost the development of gas.”