L-R: Engineer George Amara and Lucy Onoriode Okeke speaking at the Gas Investment Forum
-Felix Douglas
Speaking at a keynote address at the 4th Gas Investment Forum, Engineer George Amara, Director, Project and Technical Services, UTM Offshore Limited, made it known that the development of the UTM Floating LNG project is a great feat for the gas sector.
Nigeria has the capacity to develop and execute major gas projects despite the challenges associated with project development in the country, Engineer Amara added.
Amara made the assertion during an Executive Project Spotlight fireside chat themed: From Final Investment Decision to First Gas: Delivering Nigeria’s Next-Generation Gas Projects.
The session used the UTM Floating Liquefied Natural Gas (FLNG) project as a case study to examine the journey of a major gas project from concept and investment readiness to Final Investment Decision (FID), execution and eventual first gas.
Amara said although executing projects in Nigeria could be challenging, the difficulties were not insurmountable and Nigerian professionals had the capacity to deliver complex projects.
“It’s difficult to do projects in Nigeria. It’s difficult to do projects everywhere in the world, but some places are peculiar. But they are doable.”
The country’s challenge was not simply the availability of natural gas resources, but how to convert those resources into usable energy and economic value.
According to him, this is where well-designed and properly executed projects become critical.
“People that have energy is the same story. We carry these messages all over: how do we put it into a usable form? And that is where projects come in.”
The UTM FLNG project is being developed by UTM Offshore Limited to process stranded offshore gas reserves. The facility is designed to produce approximately 1.83 million metric tonnes of LNG annually, alongside about 300,000 metric tonnes of LPG per annum for the Nigerian domestic market.
The LPG component is expected to support clean cooking initiatives and increase domestic utilisation of Nigeria’s gas resources.
The project is being developed with international technical partners, including JGC of Japan, Technip Energies of France, COSCO Shipyard in China and KBR in the United Kingdom.
The Executive Project Spotlight brought together industry stakeholders to examine the investment, technical and execution requirements for delivering Nigeria’s next generation of gas projects.
The discussion emphasised the need to move beyond Nigeria’s abundant gas reserves and focus on developing the infrastructure and projects required to transform those resources into energy, industrial inputs and economic value.
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