NNPC seeks US Corporation, Exim Bank funding to deliver gas projects

Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) said it is in talks with the United States Finance Corporation and Exim Bank to seek financing for its multibillion-dollar gas projects.

Mele Kyari, NNPCL Group CEO, who disclosed this on Thursday at the Nigerian International Economic Partnership in New York, said the country was getting a grant to build baseline carbon emission studies by the United States Government.

He said Nigeria needs support to achieve its energy transition goals and that President Muhammadu Buhari “has also asked that we need to be supported”.

“We are already talking to the US DFC, the EXIM, so that they can give us financing and funding for our gas projects. This is very critical, so that we can have that flexibility to move forward and at the back of this,” he said.

Nigeria targets to fully transition to net zero emission by 2060 using gas as its transition fuel. The country is looking for opportunities to leverage its enormous gas resources to provide the possibility that is required for the energy transition. Nigeria requires over $400 million or $10 million annually to achieve 2060 energy transition goal, according to Vice President Yemi Osinbajo.

On this note, Nigeria is embarking on a rash of gas projects that are projected to cost billions of dollars.

In July, Africa’s largest economy signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Algeria and Niger to build a mega gas-transport project linking the three countries with a pipeline spanning more than 4,000 km (2,500 miles). The Trans-Saharan Gas Pipeline, estimated to cost $13 billion (€12.75 billion), is intended to begin in Warri, Nigeria, and end in Hassi R’Mel, Algeria, where it will link to existing pipelines that lead to Europe.

This month, NNPCL sealed a deal with Morocco’s National Office of Hydrocarbons and Mines, and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) on a 5,600-km (3,840-mile) pipeline along West Africa’s coast that would provide gas to the 15-country ECOWAS and permit fuel to be shipped to Spain and the rest of Europe.

 

“We are embarking on massive infrastructure, to see how we can deliver the Morocco gas pipeline, which will pass through a number of countries, provide a number of securities, including bringing people out of poverty and also increase more gases in the domestic market,” Kyari said.