The Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) Limited has said it exported associated gas worth about $17 billion in 12 years.

The company said it has converted about 92 billion cubic meters (bcm) of associated gas to export 968 Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) and 145 Natural Gas Liquid (NGL) product cargoes cumulatively within the period 1999 to 2011.

The company's General Manager Commercial, Patrick Olinma, disclosed this yesterday at a public forum tagged "commercial week" in Abuja.

NLNG stated that with its $12 billion investment portfolio, it is contributing about four per cent of Nigeria's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per year while fulfilling its domestic LPG supply obligations and delivering about five per cent of global LNG demand.

Olinma however, added that the company has also found recent encroachments on the sanctity of its founding Act by various government agencies unpleasant.

He further listed other challenges of the company in the global LNG market to include the impacts of US shale gas revolution, discoveries in some parts of East Africa and Australia, alternative energy on NLNG primary markets among others.

NLNG is jointly owned by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) with 49 per cent share, Shell-25 per cent, Total LNG Nigeria-15 per cent and Eni-10.4 per cent.

According to Olinma, aging gas facilities, shortfall in gas supply and forecast, challenges in embarking on upstream gas production due to the uncertainty from the non-passage of the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB), security of pipelines and gas transport and storage assets as well as other shipping challenges contribute to making its operations difficult.

His words: "In this year alone, we have had four force majeure which have placed the integrity of our deliverability in question; the Japanese have asked questions about our capacity to deliver, of course, we assured them of our capacity, but the recent issue with NIMASA did not go down well.