Gas plant

By Chineme Okafor

Seplat Petroleum Development Company Limited, operator of the Nigeria Petroleum Development Company (NPDC)/SEPLAT Joint Venture (JV) blocks on Oil Mining License (OMLs) 4, 38 and 41, has announced that its Oben gas plant will be shut down intermittently for two weeks to enable it undergo a scheduled upgrade operation.

According to the company, the scheduled shutdown of the 90 metric million scufs (mmscf) per day Oben gas plant is part of an ongoing plant upgrade that is designed to extend the lifespan of the plant by another 20 years and also achieve specification of the West African Gas Pipeline (WAGP).

A statement from the head of corporate communications of the company yesterday, Mr. Emmanuel Otokhine, explained that the shutdown operation is the concluding part of the plant upgrade which the NPDC/SEPLAT JV has invested significant amount of money to undertake.

Otokhine stated that the upgrade operation will be in two phases with each phase running for seven days. He added that during the first period of the upgrade, the plant will operate at 50 percent of installed capacity, while the second phase will see to a total shutdown of the facility for 7 days.

The statement quoted the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Seplat, Mr. Austin Avuru to have said that the plant upgrade is another testimony of the joint venture’s unwavering commitment to ensuring a long-term supply of abundant, clean, relatively cheaper fuel to end-users in Nigeria, Ghana, Togo and Benin, thus, providing additional outlet for its gas production in line with the Federal Government initiative to put an end to gas flaring in the upstream sector of Nigeria’s oil and gas industry and further monetise the gas resources of the nation .