General Manager, External Affairs of NLNG, Sienne Allwell-Brown

By Chineme Okafor

The declaration of force majeure by the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) on deliveries from its 22 metric tonnes per annum (mtpa) plant after gas supplies to the plant was disrupted may be costing the country revenue from exportation of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG), THISDAY has learnt.

This is just as the paper also learnt last night that French oil company, Total Tuesday has declared force majeure on gas supplies to the NLNG plant after it shut in production amounting to some 90,000 barrels per day (b/d) at its onshore Oil Mining Licence (OML) 58 oil and gas block due to flooding at the site.

Coming weeks after Anglo-Dutch oil and gas major Shell declared force majeure on gas supply to NLNG plant after it shut-in 150,000 b/d of oil production following vandalism of the its Bomu-Bonny pipeline late in September, NLNG’s shipment of LNG from its six-train Bonny plant after its two major gas suppliers Shell and Total cut gas supplies may be grossly affected.

Accordingly, NLNG has supply contracts with the UK’s BG Group, Italy’s Enel, France’s GDF Suez, Spain’s Endesa, Iberdrola and Gas Natural, Portugal’s Transgas and Turkey’s BOTAÅž, all of which amount to about 19mtpa.

Also, in 2011 and 2012 its off-takers diverted substantial volumes of LNG to higher-paying East Asian markets and exported more than 4.3 million tonnes of LNG to Japan, South Korea, China and Taiwan in the first half of 2012.

But the General Manager, External Affairs of NLNG, Sienne Allwell-Brown told THISDAY in a telephone conversation that the force majeure has no implication on its operation. She added that it was meeting up with its contractual obligations.

“There is no implication from that and it does not actually affect our operations because our partners declared a force majeure two weeks ago and we had to declare same to protect our customers against any eventualities but we are fine and meeting up with our contractual obligations. We are taking delivery of cargoes and have no problem with that,” Allwell-Brown said over the phone.

A source at Total who spoke to THISDAY stated that the force majeure was declared about 10 days ago with no knowledge of when production will resume at the block.

“There are floods in the Niger Delta, and water is covering a large area at the block. Total declared force majeure on gas supplies to NLNG around 10 days ago,” the source added.

Shell had precisely on October 4 declared force majeure on gas supplies to the NLNG plant as a result of the incident on the Bomu-Bonny trunk line; directly supplies feed-gas from a number of fields including the one billion cubic feet/day Gbraran/Ubie gas field as well as the Soku, Bonny and Bonga fields.