18 October 2007
Lagos — Equatorial Guinea yesterday joined the league of global natural gas exporters, launching its first LNG train into the market.
At an impressive ceremony in Malabo, President John Kufour of Ghana unveiled the train, describing the occasion, which was also attended by Nigeria's President Umaru Yar'Adua, as momentous. With its inaugural shipment of LNG on May 24, the Equatorial Guinea LNG Holdings Ltd (EG LNG) operates from a new plant in the Gulf of Guinea.
The island country has joined an elite group of LNG producers, adding to worldwide supply of clean-burning natural gas.
With the launch, the country has become the third after Nigeria and Trinidad and Tobago in the Atlantic region and the 14th country globally to export LNG.
Kufour, who is chairman of AU, said African countries had begun to take their destinies in their hands by adding value to much of the raw materials they export.
He commended Equatorial Guinea for ensuring that oil wealth was impacting on its people and expressed the hope that wealth from the gas project would continue in the trend.
Also speaking, the Managing Director of EG LNG, Mr Ken Woodworth, said the plant was completedsix months ahead of schedule and within budget. Woodworth said that with the Train 1, the company would supply 3.4million tonnes of LNG per annum to BG Gas Marketing Ltd for the next17 years."It is our hope that this Train 1 will be acatalyst for the development of future trains for EG LNG, further raising Equatorial Guinea's standing among the world's LNG producing country.
Also speaking, the President of Marathon, a shareholder in the company, Mr Clarence Cazalot, said work on the plant had set a new standard with which future worldwide LNG projects would be judged.
Because proven gas reserves are located too remote from markets to be connected by pipeline, delivering stranded gas depend on global shipments of LNG. Nigeria is advanced in the LNG sub-sector, with five trains already operational and a sixth one nearing completion.
Equatorial Guinea has an estimated reserve of 30 trillion cubic feet of gas with 100 kilometres of Bioko Island, one of the five islands in the country.
Also at the occasion were the President of Sao Tome and Principe, Mr. Frederico Menendez of Sao Tome and Principe, as well as arepresentative of Paul Biya of Cameroon.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2007 This Day. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
