Greenville LNG has commenced the supply of liquefied natural gas to industries and power stations from its $500m LNG plant located in Rivers State.
Its Managing Director, Ritu Sahajwalla, said the initiative would serve as a catalyst for economic growth and make the LNG available to all across the country.
Sahajwalia, who disclosed this at the inauguration of Greenville LNG customer location at Dufil Prima Foods Plc, Port Harcourt.
She said, “We commenced this LNG concept in 2014 and now it has materialised. We have 2,250 metric tonnes of the LNG. That is our capacity and with the view to expand, we will be supplying the LNG to Kaduna power plant in the North and there are other requests from the North.
“Industries are growing and they need the LNG. It is important to state that LNG is a catalyst for the growth of the country.”
Sahajwalia noted that the LNG could be taken to any location to support businesses, adding that Greenville had demonstrated this by making the commodity available to Dufil.
According to her, there are over 300 LNG trucks in circulation, and the firm plans to inject 5,000 more trucks into the system in the next year.
In his remarks, the Head of Operations, Dufil Prima Plc, Virenver Pethenia expressed optimism that switching to LNG from Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) would be worthwhile. He acknowledged that even though the company still had contracts with some CNG companies, it hopes to switch fully once the supply is assured because LNG is easier to transport and store.“We hope to save a lot once fully on LNG because the CNG was much difficult to transport,” he added.
Ritu Sahajwalla, also disclosed that they have entered an agreement with the federal government on supply of liquified Natural Gas (LNG) to power the Kaduna plant in Kaduna state.
According to her, a Memorandum of understanding (MOU), was signed to this effect four years ago, while construction work on storage and other relevant facilities are almost done at the power plant to commence operations. She explained that the company plans to get gas to the 250-megawatt plant through transportation by their LNG trucks since there are no pipelines yet, adding that the content of each truck is equivalent to the generation of five megawatts.
According to her, the kickoff would depend on the completion of the power plant itself, which the company is looking forward to soon, as installation of civil works would commence in 10 days.
The northern part of the country, she noted, can have about 200 megawatts in six months with the pace of work.“We all know the North has been cut off, but before pipelines are laid, power plants have to be supplied by LNG trucks while construction of facilities is underway”, she added.
Meanwhile, Sahajwalla lamented on how expensive it is to put up new structures in Nigeria since there are no existing ones, saying often, they bear the cost, citing that of the Dufil Prima project.
The Greenville MD, however, described the LNG trucks as the future and that there are 300 trucks in circulation already and they seek to inject 5,000 more trucks into the system in the next one year, “but for now, we are doing conversion kits for vehicles and educating people for better acceptance”.
