HOUSTON CHRONICLE: Shell joins project for LNG in Nigeria (ShellNews.net) Posted 14 April 05

By MATHEW CARR

Bloomberg News

The Royal Dutch-Shell Group of Companies, Europe's second-largest oil company, this week joined ChevronTexaco Corp. and BG Group in an accord with Nigerian National Petroleum Corp. for a liquefied natural gas project.

Under a memorandum of understanding, the project is expected to have a capacity of 20 million metric tons a year from four production lines, Nigerian National Petroleum said in a faxed statement. Two of the lines would be owned by Shell and the Nigerian company and the others by BG, ChevronTexaco and the Nigerian company, the Financial Times reported Wednesday.

Shell, based in London and the Hague, became involved in the project because of its six-year record in Nigeria, its reserves in the nation and its ability to get the fuel to markets, said Catherine Tanna, the executive vice president of the Americas and Africa for Shell's Gas and Power unit.

Nigeria's natural gas reserves of about 156 trillion cubic feet are among the 10 biggest in the world, according to the U.S. Energy Department. The project would boost national production at a site at Olokola, a free trade zone on the boundary between President Olusegun Obasanjo's home state of Ogun and Ondo state.

Global LNG demand may triple by 2020 because of rising energy consumption, new technology and the fuel's economic and environmental advantages, Exxon Mobil Corp. said earlier Wednesday.

LNG demand is expected to increase about 7 percent annually to 450 million metric tons a year by the end of the next decade, from 150 million tons this year and 255 million in 2010, said Ron Billings, the vice president for LNG for the Irving-based company.

The Olokola liquefaction plants may start production as early as 2009.

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/business/3133597

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