Nedogas set to activate 300 MMscfd Kwale gas facility

Sopuruchi Onwuka

The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources (Gas), Rt. Honorable Ekperikpe Ekpo, will on June 6 formally commission the Kwale Gas Gathering (KGG) and injection facility, marking a significant step in the gas monetization programme of the government.

The Kwale gas gathering and injection developed by Nedogas Development Company Limited (NDCL) has capacity to deliver 300 million standard cubic feet (MMscfd) of gas to the nation’s evolving gas grid conceived to enhance domestic demand.

The NDCL which is a Joint Venture company between Xenergi Limited and the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB) has already completed the development and technical commissioning of the plant while the NNPC Gas Infrastructure Company (NGIC) provides the supply channel to the market.

The KGG facility which is located in the Umusam Community, near Kwale in Delta State, is conceived to handle stranded gas resources in Nigeria’s OML56 oil province by providing the opportunity for independent operators in the area to monetize natural gas from their fields through the gas gathering, compression, injection and metering infrastructure for quick access to market.

The Minister will be supported at the formal commissioning ceremony by the Governor of Delta State, Rt. Hon. Sheriff Francis Orohwedor Oborevwori, and the Executive Secretary of the NCDMB, Engr. Felix Omatsola Ogbe.

According to the NCDMB which is a partner in the project, the KGG hub has been tied-in to the NGIC operated 48-inch Obiafu-Obrikom-Oben (OB-3) gas trunk line, and is now fully commissioned with gas injection capacity totaling approximately 50 MMscfd.

Feedgas comprising 20MMscfd from the Nedogas Plant located some three kilometers in Energia’s Ebendo field and another 30 MMscfd coming from Chorus Energy’s Matsogo field is expected to gradually and steadily ramp up in the short term.

The NCDMB stated that the project represents a significant milestone in Nigeria’s decade of gas initiative as well as a major achievement in the quest to provide gas into the OB3 trunk line and monetize natural gas resources from the OML 56 producer cluster.

With the successful injection of gas from the Ebendo and Matsogo fields respectively into the OB3, the KGG Facility would also receive additional gas from nearby fields including those operated by First Hydrocarbon Nigeria (FHN), Pillar Oil, and Midwestern Oil & Ga.

Harnessing gas from the clustered production in OML 56 is aimed at positioning KGG as a fully-fledged gas-gathering facility and hub with single point injection of up to 300 MMscfd of gas into the OB3. Government said the plan is to expand the capacity of the KGG facility to 600 MMscfd in the second phase.

In addition to the gas delivery obligations of the facility, the KGG will also be supplying the Delta State Economic Zone (DSEZ) from an integrated supply node within the manifold at the hub.

NDCL is a 100% Nigerian company with a proven interest in innovating and deploying cleaner energy solutions for Nigeria’s growth and economic development.

NCDMB’s equity investment in NDCL is one of the strategic projects geared towards actualizing government’s energy supply and resource optimization aspirations as captured  in the Decade of Gas programme.

According to the NCDMB, the investments are in line with the Board’s mandate to build capacity and catalyze local projects in the Nigerian oil and gas industry as enshrined under the Nigerian Oil and Gas Industry Content Development (NOGICD) Act.

Before now, NDCL’s parent company, Xenergi Limited, developed a novel approach to providing cleaner energy sources which resulted in the birth of Nigeria’s first inland Integrated Power, Propane and LPG Modular Plant in partnership with Energia-Oando JV. The plant is located in Ebendo in Delta State.

With existing capacity to process over 25 MMSCFD of associated natural gas to produce high-quality LPG and propane, the Nedogas’ fractionation plant would now expand its capacity to significant 60 MMscfd.

The KGG facility is set to create hundreds of direct and indirect jobs for indigenes of the host and nearby communities.

The Executive Secretary NCDMB stated that the success story of NEDOGAS at Kwale, Delta State could be replicated in other oil and gas producing communities to minimize gas flaring. He declared the Board’s readiness to continue collaborating with the company.

“Their model should be extended to other parts of the country where gas flaring is continuing. They have shown that with the modular system, we can quickly remove flaring from our operations in Nigeria.”

The Managing Director of NDCL, Mr. Debo Fagbami explained that with the completion of the first phase of the KGG facility, the proof-of-concept to readily monetize gas has now been established to the extent of eradicating the pain of seeing an invaluable resource being wasted.

Natural gas remains a relatively clean fossil fuel and represents a viable transition to renewable energy which plays a pivotal role in powering the growth of developing economies like Nigeria.

Rather than just being concerned about ending gas flaring, he stated, there exists opportunities to harness flare gas from production sites and generate cleaner energy.

With an estimated 180 billion cubic feet of proven Natural gas reserves, Nigeria has the ninth largest concentration in the world, but the country continues to flare significant volumes of associated gas over 60 years.