NLNG Plant Shut Over Power Outage

The Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas Plant in Bonny, Rivers State has been forced to shut down because of power outage.

Ifeanyi Mbanefo, spokesman for the company who confirmed the closure in a statement said gas suppliers, customers as well as other affected parties have been notified.

Though, Mr Mbanefo did not disclose more details that led to the power outage at the facilities, he said power was being gradually restored to the plant and strategic facilities.  The plant which has an overall capacity of 22 million tones of LNG yearly and 4 million tones of liquefied petroleum gas or cooking gas.

Its biggest buyer is the Italian electric power giant, ENEL which agreed to buy 3.5 billion cubic metres (bcm) of LNG per annum for 22 years.

Under the sale and purchase agreement signed in June 1998 with TRANSGAS of Portugal NLNG will supply 0.35 billion cubic metres of  liquefied natural gas annually to TRANSGAS via the receiving facilities of ENGAS in spain for onward transportation by pipeline to portuagal.

Delivery commenced at the start up of the NLNG plant in Bonny in the fourth quarter of 1999. NLNG currently operates six production trains, however shareholders in the project plan to build a seventh train as part of efforts by the government to ensure that revenue from gas matches that of oil.

The sixth train currently produces about 3.4 million mt / year of liquefied petroleum gas all of which was previously exported to the US market. The spokesman of NLNG said the government would earn around $1 billion per annum in revenue from gas exports if a seventh train comes on stream.

Investigation shows that NLNG’s current gas export revenue represents about 7 per cent of the country’s GDP.

Beemeneh Taneh