Yemisi Izuora
The Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas Company Limited (NLNG), has paid $30 billion in dividends to its shareholders over the years, including the government, which owns a 49-per-cent stake through the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).
NLNG’s other shareholders are Anglo-Dutch oil major Shell, which owns 25.6 percent, Total LNG Nigeria, a subsidiary of French oil giant Total which owns 15 percent, and Italy’s Eni, which has 10.4 percent.
Also the company said it earned about $85 billion from gas exports.
The company’s chief executive Babs Omotowa revealed in Lagos that the $85 billion revenue represented export conducted in the last fifteen years.
According to Omotowa, it has been a success story. Between 1999 when we came on stream and now, we have realised some $85 billion from exports of liquefied natural gas to buyers in Europe, America and Asia.
The NLNG was established to harness Nigeria’s vast natural gas resources and produce liquefied natural gas for export.
He said, “Just a few days ago, we paid $1.6 billion to the government as tax and this will go a long way to assist the new government in solving some of its problems”.
The company currently runs on six trains (production units) but has set out new plans to construct additional unit (Train 7) that will lift the total production capacity to 30 million metric tons per annum of LNG.
The Train 7 would cost an estimated $12 billion, create 18,000 construction jobs and bring in an additional $3 billion in exports when operational.
Nigeria currently exports 22 million metric tons of LNG, making it the world’s fourth largest LNG exporter.
Liquefied natural gas, which is created by cooling natural gas and transforming into liquid for transport on tankers, represents around nine percent of global gas demand.
Omotowa said plans were afoot to expand the NLNG plant in Finima on Bonny island, in the oil and gas-rich southern Rivers state, by 2017.