Energy Briefs
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SEPLAT Petroleum Development Company, SPDC, is seeking domestic energy security in Nigeria. Seplat said domestic energy security was key to Nigeria’s future development, stressing that this could be achieved in the next five years. Speaking on Tuesday, August 4, in Lagos, at the 2015 conference of the Nigeria Council of the Society of Petroleum Engineers, Austin Avuru, chief executive officer, Seplat, said in 2010 when his company inherited assets from Shell, the installed gas processing capacity was 120 million standard cubic feet, SCF, per day, while actually delivery was only 60 million standard cubic feet per day.
“We came in, inherited these facilities and set out to expand these facilities because we saw a future in gas three years ago, before people saw it. Today, we have revamped the existing 120 million – 130 million standard cubic feet per day and have built new 150 million standard cubic feet per day. Today, our total processing capacity is 300 million standard cubic feet of gas per day, but we are actually delivering between 240 million and 280 million SCF per day into the domestic market. There will be a second phase in our gas project, where we are going to install additional 225 million SCF processing capacity in addition to what we have. So, that is why I say that by the end 2017 we will have a capacity to process 500 million SCF of gas per day,” he said.
Avuru emphasised the need for increased exploration for more gas reserves, adding than if an updated audit of Nigeria’s gas reserve is done, it will put the nation’s gas reserves at 120 trillion cubic feet (tcf) instead of the 170 tcf being touted for over a decade now. He said if Nigeria achieves 1.2 million barrels per day crude oil refining capacity in addition to a natural gas production of about 7.3 billion cubic feet per day of gas that would translate to about 32,000 megawatts of power that would enable the country become a massive exporter of cement, fertiliser, and petrochemical products.
According to him, these developments will turn the oil and gas sector into an enabler of massive industrial development instead of just being a mere source of revenue that contributes less than 15 per cent to the country’s GDP. Avuru called on the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, to sell all its four refineries instead of doing perpetual Turn around Maintenance, TAM. “Nigeria can easily achieve a refining capacity of 1.2 million barrels of oil per day (bpd) if Dangote’s 600,000 bpd refinery comes on stream in addition to the 445,000 bpd nameplate of all the NNPC refineries, which if sold to competent hands would achieve its optimum production capacity,” Avuru said.
— Aug 17, 2015 @ 01:00 GMT
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