Domestic Gas, Power Boosted With 28bcm Production
About 28 billion cubic meters (Bcm) of new gas find and 60 million barrels of condensate will largely be channelled to the domestic market in order to feed the power sector.
This comes two months after the announcement of a significant gas and condensate find in the deeper sequences of the Obiafu-Obrikom fields, in oil mining lease (OML) 61, onshore Niger Delta, by oil major Eni, at the Obiafu-41 discovery just three weeks after well completion.
Production is expected to reach a capacity of about 3 million cu m/d of gas and 3,000 b/d of condensate, Eni said in a statement.
It added that Obiafu-41 Deep well has reached a total depth of 4.374 m encountering an important gas and condensate accumulation within the deltaic sequence of Oligocene age comprising more than 130m of high quality hydrocarbon-bearing sands.
The well, Eni said, can deliver in excess of 100 million standard cubic feet/day of gas, and 3,000 barrels/day of associated condensates, and will be immediately put on-stream to increase NAOC’s gas production.
The gas from this discovery will be processed at the Eni-operated Ob-Ob plant, and then sent to the 500-MW Kwale Okpai power plant, which is Nigeria’s first independent power plant. Upgrade for the Okpai plant is underway which will double its capacity to 1 GW is currently underway.
Eni’s affiliate company NAOC — in which it holds a 20% operating stake alongside state-owned NNPC (60%) and Oando (20%) — made this find in the deeper sequences of the Obiafu-Obrikom fields with the Obiafu-41 deep well, in OML61 onshore Niger Delta.
Eni’s equity gas production in Nigeria last year was some 92 Bcf (2.6 Bcm), according to the company’s website, or around 5% of the country’s total gas output.
In Nigeria, approximately 30 per cent of Eni’s gas production is supplied to the domestic market. In 2018, Eni’s equity hydrocarbon production amounted to 100,000 b/d of oil equivalent.
Nigeria, which has the largest gas reserves in Africa, has made it a priority to unlock and harness its gas potential to increase domestic and industrial power supply.
According to NNPC, Nigeria has around 202 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of proven gas reserves, a number that was increased from around 187 Tcf late last year, plus about 600 Tcf of unproven gas reserves.
But despite having the largest gas reserves in Africa, only about 25 per cent of these are being produced or are under development, according to Shell.
Nigeria is also home to the six-train, 22 million metric tonnes (mt)/year capacity Nigeria LNG facility, which capacity is set to be raised to 30 million mt/year once a planned seventh train is built at the site.
