Follow Us on Google
By Chinwendu Obienyi
The Board and Management of Seplat Energy Plc on Wednesday said that its ANOH Gas processing plant which will drive a new wave of gas transition in the country will be ready for commissioning before end of 2023.
The ANOH plant, is being built by AGPC which is an IJV owned equally between Seplat Energy Plc and the Nigerian Gas Company (NGC), a wholly owned subsidiary of Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) Limited.
Speaking to shareholders during the company’s 10th Annual General Meeting (AGM) held in Lagos via Zoom, the Chairman, Board of Directors, Seplat Energy Plc, Basil Omiyi, disclosed that the company had made commitments to deliver gas to the market this year , adding the infrastructure was meant to be commissioned this year but suffered delays due to third-party infrastructure. He noted that the infrastructure will put 300 million standard cubic feet (mscf) of gas into the market and will hopefully displace diesel and also generate more power, stressing that this will help Nigeria transit into the global climate initiative.
Omiyi said, “We are committed to bringing this project to life and commissioning it by the fourth quarter (Q4) of this year and there are a lot of good things happening at the moment.
In terms of mechanical installation of all the equipment, we are done 100 per cent with the installation and in terms of mechanical completion, we are currently at 95 per cent. Overall, when we look at the nitty-gritties that need to be done to ensure that ANOH gas plant is commissioned in Q4 this year, we are doing all we can. SPDC is also on course to deliver the two additional gas lines in this quarter as we speak. So all the different elements are working together and we are assuring shareholders that we will bring ANOH gas plant by Q4 2023”.
He further added, “We do look to growing our gas even beyond that particular project. But that project is the first time we have actually become a 50-50 partner in NNPC voluntarily creating a special purpose vehicle to develop this. We think we can partner with a lot of people who have access to gas resources that we can put into the market.
We will not just be putting gas into the market, we will also be doing gas to power and that is something we want to go into. And that’s a completely new business. For us. It’s what we call the pillar 3 of our business and we are supporting renewable energy in the sense that renewable energy on its own today cannot provide all round clock power. So there has to be gas that provides that and when the renewable energy is available, and you use it, so you reduce the amount of carbon. Gas as a transition fuel is what Africa has adopted and Nigeria has certainly adopted it too”.
When quizzed on the status of its acquisition of Mobil Producing Nigeria Unlimited (MPNU), the chairman said that it is still in discussions to resolve the issues it has with the NNPC limited while adding that once the issues have been resolved, Seplat’s whole business will be transformed both in size and production.
Speaking on the outlook of the company, the company’s Acting Chief Executive Officer, Samson Ezugworie said, Seplat have learnt a lot in respect to the pipeline outages and terminals challenges that it had last year which affected its production performance in Q3 2022 while adding that it is looking at addressing them this year.
“We hope and plan to sustain the Q1 2023 performance and continue to surpass the level of performance in oil and gas production and our financial performance that to the extent we will have a productive outing in 2023”, Ezugworie said.
