Platform Petroleum has become a gas supplier of some reckoning in the Nigerian domestic gas market.
The marginal field operator currently supplies 22Million standard cubic feet of gas per day (22MMscf/d) to a pipeline operated by the Nigerian Gas Company (NGC).
“All of this is essentially lean gas that comes from the stripping process that is achieved by the PNG gas plant, located on the Egbeoma (marginal) field in the north-western Niger Delta, according to Osa Owieadolor, the company’s outgoing Chief Executive Officer. Platform Petroleum is the operator of that field.
That makes Platform the marginal field operator with the second highest volume of lean gas supplied to the local market. Savannah Petroleum, another marginal field operator, supplies about 100MMscf/d, processed from the Uquo marginal field to the domestic market, mainly to power plants in Calabar and Ikot Abasi, in the east of the country.
The Nigerian domestic gas market is relatively small, with the total volume (supplied to power plants, fertiliser plants and industries) coming to less than 1,500MMscf/d, so two marginal fields supplying 122MMscf/d is a big deal.
“Prior to this process, we were flaring significant volumes”, Owieadolor told Africa Oil+Gas Report. “Now we’re delivering about 1.2MM cf/d of gas to PowerGas for their CNG plant”, he explained. “We have significantly reduced our flaring by over 80%, and we should achieve a total flare-down in our field before the end of the year, because we have also commissioned a compression system that will enable us to do that”.
Platform achieved its first commercial lean gas delivery to the Nigerian Gas Marketing Company (NGMC) a subsidiary of the NGC, in November 2020, following the commissioning of a section of the OB3 gas pipeline.
“Prior to this time, we had executed a Gas Sales and Purchase Agreement with NGMC, that happened over two years ago”, Owieadolor told Africa Oil+Gas Report. “We did same with PowerGas and one or two other Third Party companies. The model has been willing buyer-willing seller”.
Oweiadolor clarified that Platform is not the current operator of the PNG Gas Processing Plant, “but we are an investor there and our involvement is more like an oversight function at the board level. But outside of that, because of the relationship on the board level, we also provide some bit of support based on our experience. That’s how it relates to the operatorship of the plant”.
Source: Africa Oil + Gas Report