Seplat offers processing capacity for gas flare monetization
Diversifies into renewables
Sopuruchi Onwuka
Prominent indigenous energy company, Seplat Energy Plc, has thrown open processing services at its natural gas plants for players seeking opportunities in the domestic market.
Managing Director, Mr Roger Brown, stated that the company’s huge investments in domestic gas processing and supply hold potential to, and would certainly, enhance government’s efforts at flare gas monetization and power generation boost.
Mr Brown who hosted media representatives in his office in Lagos weekend offered in insight into the company’s change of corporate identity from Seplat Petroleum Development Company Plc to Seplat Energy Plc; saying the company would retain its thriving petroleum business in the country while also diversifying into new energy sources.
He said Seplat would logically diversify from petroleum exploration and production to cleaner energy options in line with the prevailing global movement towards decarbonisation. He explained that the company would direct attention to supporting both grid and off grid power production by immediately supplying gas to thermal generation plants and later providing solar power solutions to off-grid consumers.
He pointed at the company’s significant gas processing plants as huge opportunity for all the gas players in the country, saying that the company has spare capacity to offer tariff based processing services for other upstream gas players.
In stressing the relevance of the company’s gas processing investments in the government’s flare gas monetization programme, Mr Brown said that Seplat was willing for commercial gas processing deal with government in any arrangement that would incentivise harnessing of flare gas as processing feedstock.
The Oracle Today reports that government is driving a flare gas commercialization programme under which third party players would be licensed to harness associated gas from the nation’s oilfield flare booms for valorisation.
Mr Brown stated that Seplat’s processing plants offer ready services for rapid realization of the targets of the programme, adding that government could channel harnessed flare gas to the company’s plants under a commercial arrangement.
On sustainable plant optimization, Mr Brown said the company has robust gas reserves to guarantee feedstock. He added that Seplat’s work programme on operated assets would continue to drive organic reserves growth, noting that Niger Delta remains a rich petroleum basin with huge gas opportunities.
He also stated that changing asset ownership dynamics in the local petroleum industry would also provide Seplat with enhanced inorganic reserves growth. He did not disclose whether the company was participating in asset divestment programmes announced by some foreign multinational oil majors in the country.
He said the company’s focus on midstream processing investments amplified the role of gas as transition fuel which, according to him, would dominate global energy mix in the immediate to long term.
Following a string of industry policies that seek to deepen the local gas market through broader fuel diversification programmes, Mr Brown said Seplat’s huge gas portfolios position the company as solid supply base for all specification of gas products.
He said the company’s processing operation would churn out products that are not limited to dry natural gas molecules for grid supplies; liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) also called cooking gas; compressed natural gas (CNG); and other products.
These products, according to him, would significantly cut emission by displacing biomass as dominant cooking fuel in the country and diesel based off-grid power generation which, he said, account for 80 percent of total electricity production in Nigeria.
He made it clear that hydrocarbon resources are critical to successful energy transition, saying that gas would displace biomass as Nigeria’s primary fuel, arrest rapid deforestation, save cost of electricity generation by boosting grid supply.
Large volumes of condensate that would be stripped from wet upstream gas, Mr Brown explained, would boost the company’s crude oil production.
The Oracle Today reports that Seplat Energy Plc is Nigeria’s biggest midstream plant operator, following the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) Limited. Whereas the NLNG is revenue focused gas export company, Seplat’s processing plants are dedicated to the fast growing domestic market.
Mr Brown stated that Seplat Energy has a long term plan for the LNG business.
