According to the Punch, the companies announced the alliance during a briefing on flare gas recovery in Nigeria organised with the support of the Austrian Development Agency and the Commercial Section of the Austrian Embassy in Nigeria.
They said gas flare monetisation projects could potentially save Nigeria over $2.5bn per year by reducing fuel costs in the transportation and power generation sectors by over 30%.
According to a statement, Powergas will provide the necessary infrastructure for the CNG supply and ETEFA will supply gas engines and associated technology.
“Eventually, ETEFA intends to locally manufacture gas-fired buses, trucks and engines in Nigeria with its Nigerian partners,” the statement says.
The Managing Director, Powergas Nigeria, Mr Pulak Sen making his opinion known in the statement, writes:
“As a company, Powergas is committed to providing an environmentally friendly fuel source to spur economic growth and industrialisation in conjunction with reducing the carbon footprint.
“We believe that natural gas-fired power generation emits up to five times less nitrogen oxides compared with diesel generation and near-zero particulate matter. Today, Nigeria’s annual diesel importation is the same as the natural gas being flared.
Also in the statement, the chief executive officer of ETEFA GmbH, Mr Johann Rieger, says:
“The quality of the imported diesel, according to United Nations Environment Programme, hardly fulfils Euro 1 emission standards because of its high sulphur content.
Diesel imports are US dollar-dependent; hence, increasing the cost of fuel and decreasing the country’s scarce foreign exchange reserves. With reserves of 188 Trillion cubic feet, Nigeria had the largest gas reserves in Africa.
“As a domestically available natural resource, effective utilisation is extremely important for import substitution (of liquid fuels) and forex savings. Gas Flare Reduction Programme-sponsored projects can clean and process flared gas into natural gas, along with other by-products such as propane, butane and the LPG”.
According to him, if all of the gas being flared in Nigeria is captured and processed, it can power up to 200,000 city buses (public transport) or 200,000 trucks (commercial transport), or even double Nigeria’s power generation capacity, while significantly improving the quality of the air (lower carbon and particulate emissions).
