The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation and its joint venture partners on Wednesday in Abuja signed the Final Investment Decision on the development of the 4.3 trillion cubic feet Assa North/Ohaji South Fields in Oil Mining Lease 21.
Joint venture partners of the NNPC in this project include Shell Petroleum Development Company, Total Exploration and Production Nigeria and Nigeria Agip Oil Company.
The NNPC Group General Manager, Group Public Affairs Division, Ndu Ughamadu, said the project, when fully developed, would add about 600 million standard cubic feet of gas per day to the national gas grid with the capacity to expand to 1.2 billion cubic feet per day, while another 197 million stock barrel of condensate would also be realised.
The Group Managing Director, NNPC, Maikanti Baru, described the ANOH project as a critical gas supply hub in Nigeria’s burgeoning gas-infrastructure network designed to provide the linkage between the eastern, western and northern gas pipeline systems.
Baru, who was represented at the FID execution event by the NNPC Chief Operating Officer, Upstream, Bello Rabiu, said the successful completion of the multi-faceted project, which was an integral part of the seven critical gas development projects, would be dependent on a number of critical success factors and enablers that include synergy and teamwork between the NNPC and all the key stakeholders.
The NNPC boss thanked stakeholders for signing the FID on the ANOH Project after being on the drawing board for 14 years.
He said the corporation and its JV partners had worked on all the issues and had developed a sustainable strategy to develop the considerable gas resources in Assa North-Ohaji South Fields.
“Finally, I will like to conclude with immense compliments to the NNPC, SPDC, TEPN and NAOC project teams and other critical stakeholders as we enter into the next major phases of engineering, procurement and construction of this project,” Baru said.
He said the corporation would continue to leverage available expertise and capital from its global outreach to accelerate and deliver on first gas from the project between the last quarter of 2019 and the first quarter of 2020.
To this end, he noted that the NNPC had engaged two project management consultants (DeltaAfrik/Worley Parson and Crestech/Penspen) who would work with NNPC JV partners and other stakeholders to achieve set project deliverables, as NNPC’s project management teams were expected to strengthen oversight functions by ensuring prompt decision making and timely approvals.
The Managing Director, SPDC and Country Chair, Shell Companies in Nigeria, Osagie Okunbor, said Shell was committed to the successful implementation of the project.
He commended the resilience, diligence and enthusiasm of the project team and emphasised that the ANOH project would offer immeasurable opportunities for Nigerian firms to benefit from engineering, procurement and construction contracts.
Okunbor also announced the inauguration of boards to administer the Global Memorandum of Understanding for the two clusters of the project to the tune of N1bn for development projects within the host communities for the next five years.
The Managing Directors of TEPN and NAOC, Nicholas Terraz and Lorenzo Fiorillo, respectively, aligned their companies with the NNPC’s aspiration of ensuring timely completion of the project.