Nigeria’s local content has received a boost, following the signing of preliminary Front End Engineering Design, Pre-FEED, agreement as an indigenous firm, UTM Offshore Limited, with Japan Gas Corporation, JGC, to establish a Floating Liquefied Natural Gas, FLNG, the first of its kind in Nigeria. The Pre-FEED scope shall be completed within four months from commencement date.
Also, UTM has engaged Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR) UK to provide owner’s engineering services on the project.
KBR shall provide due diligence on the JGC scope by conducting a third-party review of all deliverables from JGC during the Pre-FEED.
Speaking at the virtual signing event, the Managing Director of UTM Offshore Limited, Mr. Julius Rone, said JGC Corporation came highly recommended, given the several similar projects the firm had undertaken across the world. “What UTM is doing is largely novel. It is the first of its kind in Nigeria and we are very excited about this trail-blazing project; the opportunity to build from the scratch, the first Floating Liquefied Natural Gas Facility in Nigeria is humongous.
”That is why we cannot afford to settle for less hence our resolve to contract JGC Corporation, one of the leading firms in the LNG Construction sector in the world, to provide the Pre-Front End Engineering Design Services for this first Floating LNG facility in Nigeria,” Mr. Rone Said. UTM Offshore Limited is pioneering the development of the FLNG facility in collaboration with LNG Investment Management Services (LIMS), a subsidiary of Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).
According to Rone, the floating LNG, when fully completed shall have an LNG production capacity of 1.2 mmtpa, Turret and Mooring System, Gas pre-treatment modules, LNG production modules, living quarters, self-contained power generation and utilities as well as capacities for LNG storage and offloading.
At the landmark agreement signing event, he thanked President Muhammadu Buhari for creating an enabling environment for indigenous firms like UTM Offshore to equitably operate in the very sensitive and competitive upstream sector of the petroleum industry.
He said the resolve of UTM Offshore to embark on the huge project was steeped in the National Gas Policy of the Muhammadu Buhari administration.
He also thanked the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Chief Timipre Sylva, “for tenaciously driving the President’s vision in the petroleum sector, particularly the gas policy” He also expressed gratitude to a number of key players in the nations petroleum industry, including the Group Managing Director of Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, Mallam Mele Kyari and the Director of Nigeria’s Department of Petroleum Resources, DPR, Mr. Sarki Auwalu for their support for the FLNG project.
“Today’s event would never have been possible but for the first class management team at Nigeria’s Department of Petroleum Resources. DPR has most professionally been guiding us on this project. In fact, DPR reserves the right to claim huge chunk of the success story of this first Floating Liquefied Natural. ”I am particularly happy to assert that UTM Offshore has, so far, not disappointed DPR since it issued us the all-important license to embark on this novel but noble project. With God helping us we are very poised to make our great nation and our people proud by successfully commissioning this first FLNG facility in record time,” he said.