Hope dims on early completion of Nigeria’s most strategic gas pipeline

The desire of Nigerians to enjoy a significant uptick in electricity supply to their homes and businesses has again suffered a setback, following the failure of contractors handling the 123 kilometre East-West Obiafo/Obirikom to Oben (OB3) gas pipeline (worth $700million) to meet the project completion deadline again.
The project which supposed to be completed by July 2017 was shifted by one year on technical grounds, but again, this year, even though a lot of mileage has been achieved by the two contractors handling the project they still could not meet the deadline again because of weather and other technical issues.
The new date of completion for its own phase of the project by Nestoil Limited has been fixed for first or second quarter 2019.
Chekwueluka Umeh, an executive director with Nestoil Limited, one of the companies working on the project  when contacted by BusinessDay, said the problem has to do with  seasonally  swamp which affected their equipment and delayed the company from making any reasonable progress during the rainy season.
“Our equipment gets stuck most times when it rains and when this happens we may have to wait until when the rains abate. By the time the rains stops we may discover that some of the equipment are badly damaged and this may necessitate us ordering for another set of equipment,” Umeh, told BusinessDay.
The executive director of Nestoil Limited said the project is about 87 per cent completed but most of the pipelines are submerged underwater, a situation he said has made the job a challenging one. He stated that the rain fall pattern of the country has changed greatly and this has become a major challenge for the company in carrying out its jobs.
“The pipelines must be welded and buried under ground but this is difficult to do when there is flooding of the terrains as the river banks are overflowing,” he said.
All the weldings that needed to be done have been completed although  joining spooks and burying are still undone while transferring metering stations and isolation valves that are built overseas are also being installed.
According to him, security is also a major issue because the workers of the company are being harassed by Kidnappers. About 14 workers were kidnapped in one day.
He said however that the Nigerian Gas Pipeline Trading Company (NGPTC), a subsidiary of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) are aware of these challenges which is why they are  rescheduling the completion date.
The pipeline was initiated to facilitate the transportation of gas from the eastern Niger Delta, where there are a lot of gas reserves, to the west Niger Delta, where high demand exists because of the high number of power plants and industrial gas consumers.
Information gathered by BusinessDay  in respect of Oilserv Limited which is another company handling the project is  that  it would start  commissioning some of the equipment and perhaps those that can be ready for use put into use.
The company it was learnt had its own challenges as it has done reconstruction of some of the existing infrastructure such as roads and bridges before some of the equipment could be transported through KoKo River to the sites where they are to be used.
Already some of the gas plant at Oben, Ajaokuta, Geregu would probably be commissioned in October this year.
The project, which is part of a network of gas pipelines under construction around the country, is expected to boost the start-up of hundreds of new businesses, reduce the cost of doing business in the country by as much as 30 percent, and generate several jobs, within a few years.
When the pipeline is completed, power plants such as Egbin, Sapele, Geregu, Omotosho, Olurunsogo and Ugheli, would have seamless gas supply and generate a significant mark-up in electricity, as it is to be linked to the Escravos-Lagos pipeline.
The East –West gas pipeline is about 123km x 48inches and is supposed to add about 1 billion standard cubic feet of gas to the domestic gas system. It was awarded to two indigenous oil servicing companies, Nestoil and Oilserv Limited in 2012 with July 31, 2017 as the deadline for the completion of the project.
The contract, which is split in two halves for both indigenous oil firms, was awarded in the spirit of local content development. This is the first time local companies are handling a strategic project of this magnitude as the project is also expected to generate over 1,000 jobs.

OLUSOLA BELLO