IN earlier publications of these articles, it was established that natural gas has the potential to create wealth given its widespread uses for domestic, industrial, power and transportation applications. To give this resource local economic value, models need to be fashioned which connect the resource with the local communities where it is currently being flared, a concept that has significant benefits in reducing gas flare, creating employment in the host communities and generating wealth for all stakeholders.
Undoubtedly, appropriate legislation and policies which encourage entrepreneurs to locate gas utilization projects very close to local communities are needed to attain this novel objective. Pockets of such projects already exist but are confined to the international oil companies who use gas for numerous purposes including electricity generation for their internal use and sometimes for the use of their host communities.
The oil producing areas of Nigeria should therefore be host to a plethora of industries which use natural gas either as feedstock or to generate electricity and significant value addition to the Nigerian economy.
Natural gas contains methane, ethane, propane, butane, and heavier hydrocarbons, all of which have commercial value when used to produce power, methanol, LPG, and CNG to service local energy demands. Natural gas is also used to produce steel, aluminium, cement, glass, paper, clothing, brick, electricity and as an essential raw material for many common products such as paints, fertilizer, plastics, bricks, antifreeze, dyes, photographic film, medicines, food processing and storage. LPG and CNG are particularly common in cooking and water heating in the residential/commercial sector as well as heating of boilers and furnaces in the industrial sector. Recently, Gas to Liquids plants have become popular as they produce LPG, Naphtha, Diesel, Kerosene, petrol, wax and lubrication oils.
To bring these opportunities to life, new gas utilization technologies need to be adopted and nurtured to commercialization as viable options to flaring. To ensure that their benefits are widespread and not too capital intensive, such projects can be developed in small-scale modules much like “distributed power”. Where finished products don’t have markets in the immediate communities, they can either be evacuated to neighbouring major cities or exported to neighbouring African countries for consumption.
In reality, many obstacles currently exist in the Nigerian environment to bringing such projects to implementation. Some of those obstacles include inadequate or non-existent infrastructure and lack of a long-term legal, fiscal and policy framework to encourage entrepreneurship. It is hoped that all of these will be addressed in the gas master plan as gas utilization can be a catalyst to the growth of the local industrial economy.
Carew is CEO, Fossil Services Ltd.
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Continued here:
Community-based Gas Utilisation Projects