Greenville inaugurates $500 million Liquefied Natural Gas plant in Nigeria

Greenville, an oil and gas company has inaugurated its first phase of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) plant with a daily capacity of 2,250 tons in Rivers state, Nigeria.

The plant, which falls in line with the Nigerian government’s initiative on gas to power is a $500 million investment built to generate about 750 million tons per year.

Greenville’s Chairman, Eddy van den Broeke said the plant is small when compared to the one situated at Bonny Island, but is still relevant on a general scale and should be considered a revolution in the industry. He noted that his company would transport the liquefied natural gas through road transportation via trucks which are LNG powered, hence the target mostly is to areas without pipelines.

The company’s chairman expressed his dissatisfaction with the Nigerian government’s attitude to foreign investors by saying “when you bring your money to invest in Nigeria you are on your own because no body helps you, not the ministries or anyone and this is a real problem”.

He said foreign investments have not been promoted, especially in Nigeria’s oil and gas industry. Van den Broeke revealed that the project was delayed by two years because of challenges in finance and the harsh business environment.

According to the chairman “we have invested between 450 to 500 million dollars; this is including the cost of building infrastructures like filling stations and storages, making the cost of the whole value chain to be on us and which should not be so”.

He noted that the company’s decision to start the second phase of the project would depend on the Nigerian government’s reaction to the first phase, the friendliness of the environment and the views of other investors.

Ritu Sahajwalla, Greenville’s Managing Director, said the company seeks to introduce the truck transportation system to target the northern zone of the country where pipelines don’t exist.

She explained that the system will enable trucks take the LNG directly to the end user to produce power. This simply means that one truck can produce five megawatt of power.