NOG ENERGY WEEK: Emeka Ene talks about the new NNPCL and the gas commercialization programme

Guardian Nigeria

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00:00Looking at the NOG 2025, what are your expectations?

00:04What do you see that is different from what we have seen in the previous year?

00:08We come to have conversation every year and not it seems to be changing.

00:11What is your take on this?

00:13I think it's a great platform for the conversation to start in the industry.

00:17For the first time, we have a management team at the NMPC that is professional and technical.

00:22We've had the recent changes where independents have taken over what was traditional in an IOC space.

00:30We've had the service companies that have made a foray into the rest of Africa.

00:35All these three are coming together at a time when the geopolitical environment is so unstable

00:40and therefore people are trying to chat away what role will gas play in this present dispensation.

00:47So this platform, NOG, has provided that energy for change, that drive for change.

00:53And I think that is what is going to happen.

00:55It's going to create a momentum that goes beyond just the conference.

00:59Yes, so one primary conversation we have heard so much about this money is in the area of gas.

01:04You are doing a lot in the aspect of gas, particularly in terms of turning the gas with flair into money

01:10and economic value for the country.

01:12How long are you going with your gas commercialization program?

01:15Yeah, well, it's interesting because it's turning upside down the gas infrastructure build out.

01:23Typically, gas products take a long time to gestate and you start from the market, come back to the feedstock.

01:29In this particular case, Nigeria is already flaring more than 140 flair sites across the Niger Delta.

01:35Gathering them requires a lot of infrastructure.

01:37So the solution is to create solutions, modularized solutions that can go to the gas sources to monetize that source.

01:44And the market demand has been increasing because there is a value proposition.

01:48Gas is cheaper to run your equipment, your transportation on gas than it is if you are doing traditional fuels.

01:55So that mix has created momentum in within the gas monetization space.

02:02What is missing is cross-functional partnerships between the traditional operators, the network owner, network operators, NGIC, and a lot,

02:11and private sector capital, attracting private sector capital to build on the national infrastructure.

02:17Spore lines, monetization projects, the growth of gas-based industries are so critical to reducing imports.

02:24Because even though we are a major gas producer, we still import a lot of what we do, methanol and so on and so forth,

02:31creating the impacts on agriculture through fertilizers and all of that,

02:36and even utilizing and leveraging the steel industry, right, and of course the power industry traditionally.

02:42So gas is so crucial.

02:43And I think the low-hanging fruit is the associated gas that is being flared across the country.

02:50But big projects are coming up, floating LNG projects, that will make it work ultimately.

02:57Yeah, but for me as a journalist, I don't see the speed of this transformation happening as it should happen.

03:02Let's take the CNG option, for instance, as an example.

03:06Most people have converted their car to run on CNG, but when you go across most of the stations,

03:11there's still no gas for most of those people to buy.

03:14The demand far outweighs the supply we're seeing.

03:17So what are the options, what are the quick solutions, quick wins, like you mentioned,

03:23that we can find to unlock some of these problems?

03:25So the quick wins remain modularized solutions that take gas to market as quickly as possible.

03:30It is good that it's a demand-driven market as opposed to a supply-driven market.

03:36And what has happened now is that the demand-driven market is going to suck in investments into creating that thing.

03:42And you've seen that happen already with micro-LNG plants growing up in Ajokuta.

03:46Five of them are being built at the same time.

03:50With CNG hubs popping up in different parts of the country, it's going to take some time.

03:55But because it's private sector-driven capital, there's an urgency,

03:58there's a hunger to get to market and start to monetize and create a business out of it.

04:04So I would think in the next 12 months, we're going to start seeing a lot of progress taking place.

04:10And it's a very interesting time to live in, really, because people have been talking about gas for decades.

04:16But this is the opportunity now to marry the market with the solution in a way that makes sense.

04:22Thank you very much.

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