Within the third quarter of this year, the $2.8 billion Ajaokuta-Kaduna-Kano (AKK) gas pipeline project is expected to begin supplying gas along that route as the project has reached 70 percent completion, the Nigerian National Dr Petroleum Company Ltd (NNPCL) has disclosed.
The Group Chief Executive Officer of NNPC Ltd, Mele Kyari, who disclosed this to newsmen during an inspection exercise of the AKK pipeline Bravo site in Ahoko community, Kogi State, on Monday, noted that the NNPCL has released the sum of $1.1bn to finance the project.
According to Kyari, being a critical infrastructure project for the Nigerian energy sector, the NNPCL has been meeting all its funding obligations to the contractors.
Persecondnews reports that the AKK pipeline is a 614km-long pipeline being developed by NNPCL to transport natural gas from the Ajaokuta Terminal Gas Station (TGS) in Kogi, Southern Nigeria through Niger State, the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), and Kaduna to terminate in Kano.
The $2.8bn pipeline project represents phase one of the 1,300km-long Trans-Nigerian Gas Pipeline (TNGP) project, which is being developed as part of Nigeria’s Gas Master Plan to utilise the country’s surplus gas resources for power generation as well as for consumption by domestic customers.
The NNPCL boss said: “First of all, we are here to thank our crew, our contractors, our staff who are doing everything possible to deliver this project. We are grateful to them and appreciate the great work they are doing.
“For the benefit of the Nigerian public, this is one of the most massive projects that we will run in the company. It is of immense proportion of value to our country and to the socio-economic growth of our country.
“We know that this is a must-deliver project. This project has not stopped for one day. We have continued to fund it despite the fact that we do not have third-party financing for the project.
“We have so far spent over $1.1bn on this project from our cashflow. We are a very different company today. We are a commercial company. We have inter-company laws within our company now.”
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As we speak now, we don’t owe a dollar to our contractors today. We paid all their invoices, there are over 30 sites that are active today in this project, and we are very hopeful that we will deliver this project.
“The pipeline has the capacity to transport two billion standard cubic feet of natural gas per day to three proposed Independent Power Plants in Abuja, Kaduna, Kano, and other Gas-Based Industries as well as other identified and proposed commercial off-takers along the entire pipeline route.”
On other deliverables and benefits of the AKK project, Kyari said it would improve power generation and boost the country’s economy.
“The project has the potential of greatly improving the nation’s power generation capacity and the economy as a whole through industrialization as well as other economic uses.
“NNPC Limited remains highly committed towards the delivery of strategic national infrastructure projects through responsive project delivery, active collaboration with government, security agencies, and communities.
“It will also the deployment of technology in the form of human and technical intelligence for surveillance along the entire Right of Way to enable us realise the aspiration of timely delivering the AKK project for the benefit of all Nigerians,” NNPC’s GCEO said.
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