The Nigerian Petroleum Development Company (NPDC) says it is targeting 500,000 Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) daily production to meet local demand and end the importation of the product.
The Group Managing Director (GMD) of Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Mele Kyari, said this on Wednesday while inspecting the 100-million capacity Oredo Integrated Gas Handling Facility (IGHF) in Ologbo, Edo.
Kyari said that the company had lined up some projects to facilitate the realisation of the target within two years.
He said: “About one year ago, NPDC was producing about 136,000 barrels per day. Today we are producing 260,000 barrels per day.
“This is a very magnificent level of growth in any upstream company and our target is to take the company to the production level of 500,000 barrels per day.
“This is possible within two years. We have lined up a number of projects and activities and today we have the highest number of rings running in the country.
“We have five rings running at the same time, adding incremental value and delivering major projects which will ultimately take us to the production of the 500,000 barrels per day.”
He further said that the Oredo IGHF plant was a gas conditioning and processing facility deployed to recover and fractionate Natural Gas Liquid.
He said that the plant had a capacity of 100 million standard cubic feet of gas per day with estimated product stream of 330 tons daily.
According to him, this is very monumental compared to the current level, where all the supplies, except those coming from the NLNG, are coming from imports.
“We are trying to contain importation of gas because Nigeria is blessed with gas resource and cannot be importing LPG.
“Completing this project is a monumental feat for this country and ultimately what is important is that Nigeria will be sufficient in LPG within a short period of time.
“With the support from President Muhammadu Buhari, gas will now be delivered without interruption into the domestic market.
“The same for the supply of crude oil to the international market by our own company.
“Today, we are making about five billion standard cubic feet of gas into the entire domestic market, including the NLNG supply of about 3.5 billion,” Kyari said.
He said that the balance of 1.5 billion or a little more than that would come into the domestic market to be shared between power and industries.
Also, the Managing Director of NPDC, Mansur Sambo, said that with the completion of the plant, NPDC would have achieved flare out in OML 111 and other neighbouring fields in line with the Federal Government’s directives.
Sambo explained that the Oredo IGHF plant would boost power generation in Nigeria with more gas delivery to the power sector.
“The largest contributor of gas to the domestic market and the power sector is NPDC.
“NPDC contributes about a billion standard cubic feets gas production to the entire mix of production and majority of it goes into the domestic market,” he said. (NAN)
