FINANCIAL TIMES: Shell, BG and Chevron in Nigerian gas venture (ShellNews.net) 13 April 05

By Clay Harris

Royal Dutch/Shell, BG Group and Chevron Texaco are to co-operate with the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation on a liquefied natural gas project that will have an annual capacity equal to about 13 per cent of last year's global production of LNG. 

NNPC said last night that a memorandum of understanding had been signed with the three companies to develop the Olokola LNG project west of the Niger delta.

The project is envisaged to have an annual capacity of 20m tonnes; global LNG shipments in 2004 was 148m tonnes. One study predicts global capacity of nearly 300m tonnes by 2015.

There was no estimate of the cost of the project, due to come onstream in 2009 and 2010. Developing LNG projects costs about $1bn per 1m tonne annual capacity, based on the expected spending on a project that Shell recently signed in Qatar.

NNPC said the project followed two separate studies, one by Shell and one by Chevron and BG, into greenfield projects on the Olokola area which has a natural deepwater berth. The Nigerian company said it had identified “significant synergy and cost savings that could be achieved by merging the two.”

All facilities would be jointly owned except the four “trains” used in liquefaction; two would be owned by Shell and NNPC, the others by BG, Chevron and NNPC. There will be a single operator and all trains will use the same technology.
 

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