Nigeria LNG Limited will next month mark its official breakthrough into the European spot market with two cargoes which were originally intended to be delivered at Lake Charles, Louisiana, and were subsequently re-routed to Europe.

CMS Marketing, the US gas marketing company, will on 2nd October take delivery of a cargo to be transported by the LNG Port Harcourt from Bonny to Montoir, France. TotalFinaElf Gas and Power North America Inc. buyer of the second shipment on LNG Abuja will take delivery of the cargo at Zeebrugge, Belgium, a week later. This is the first time NLNG will deliver spot cargoes to Europe since it began production two years ago.

Spot sales are short-term contracts for one-off deliveries from suppliers to buyers on agreed terms. NLNG, one of the most reliable suppliers of LNG from the Atlantic Basin holds in 2001, the record for the highest number of spot cargoes to Lake Charles, currently the only open access terminal in the United States. The General Manager Commercial for NLNG, Mr. Jean-Francois Capelle, said the company hopes to record similar performance with European spot sales and to be able to grasp further arbitrage opportunities between both sides of the Atlantic basin. NLNG has so far loaded and delivered 158 cargoes, 14 of which are spot cargoes, since it started production in October 1999. NLNG has already executed Master Agreements for spot cargoes with CMS, Coral, TotalFinaElf and BP.

Nigeria LNG currently has long term contracts with ENEL of Italy, Gas Natural (formerly Enagas) of Spain, Botas of Turkey, Gaz de France and Transgas of Portugal. It has also signed Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for supply of LNG for its 4th and 5th trains with Enron, Iberdrola and SNAM.

NLNG commenced commercial operation in October 1999 with its two train 5.9 million tonnes per annum Base Project. A third train of similar design and capacity as the Base Project trains is currently under construction and is scheduled for completion in late 2002. On completion of the 4th and 5th trains, NLNG will have an overall production capacity of 17 million tonnes per annum of LNG and 2 million tonnes per annum of LPG.

NLNG is a Nigerian Joint Venture company whose shareholders are the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (49%), Shell (25.6%), TotalFinaElf (15%) and Agip (10.4%).

 

Nigeria LNG Limited
September 20, 2001