Nigeria: FG Takes Man-Hunt for Oil, Gas Investors to the U.S.

Diezani Alison-Madueke

http://allafrica.com/stories/201105100716.html

Adeola Yusuf

Lagos — The federal government at the weekend took the search for more investments into the Nigeria's multi-billion dollars oil and gas industry to Houston, Texas in the United States (U.S) where the minister of petroleum resources, Diezani Alison-Madueke restated that the Nigerian Content Act is not intended to nationalize assets of investors in the Nigerian economy.

The minister who stated this while delivering the lead paper on Investment Opportunities in the Nigerian Oil and Gas Industry maintained that the progress being recorded in the implementation of the Nigerian Oil and Gas Industry Content Development Act 2010 will ensure the successful execution of President Goodluck Jonathan's Gas Industrial Revolution.

While describing the passage and signing of the Nigerian Content Bill into law as one of the most important achievements of this administration, the Minister assured that the implementation of the Act will result in the execution of major aspects of the projects envisaged under the Gas Revolution in Nigeria.

According to her, this will create thousands of jobs in Nigerian facilities and yards.

She explained that the Act mandates a significant retention of the planned capital investments in-country, in a non-disruptive manner, adding that the capacity required in-country to support the planned projects is huge and thus created a major investment opportunity for stakeholders.

The Minister stressed that the Gas Industrialization Revolution launched by President Jonathan is focused on an industrial rebirth of Nigeria through the stimulation of gas based industries such as fertilizer, methanol and petrochemicals.

Projects launched by President under the Gas Revolution include the development of Africa's largest petrochemical complex by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation and its partner, the Saudi Arabian conglomerate - Xenel.

This will cost about $6bn and is planned to be in place by 2015.

It also includes two fertilizer plants to be built in partnership with the Indian conglomerate - Nagarjuna.

This will consist of two 1.3 Million Tons Per Annum Fertilizer plants complemented by five discrete blending plants to be located across the country, to cost about $4bn.

Another major project is the development of a 1 billion cubic feet per day gas Central Processing Facility which is expected to be built by a consortium led by Agip in partnership with NNPC and Oando.

This facility will cost about $2bn and will provide the feedstock for the fertilizer and petrochemical plants, in addition to supplies to the Power Plants.

She also stated that government is also in the process of setting up an "LPG Distribution Network" that will distribute LPG to various part of the Country. LPG supplies to the network will be drawn from three Gas Processing Facilities to be developed.