By Prospectus Mojjido, in Abuja
The 614 kilometre Ajaokuta to Abuja to Kano (AKK) gas pipeline in Nigeria is 43% completed.
Construction of the two sections of the line, ground broken in 2020, have been interrupted by insurgency, kidnapping, community challenges over right of way, as well as the chronically inept logistics overview that usually attends any project superintended by the NNPC Ltd, Nigeria’s state hydrocarbon firm.
But the project is ongoing, despite widespread misgivings that it had been scuppered by the decision by China to pull out the funding.
The NNPC has essentially funded the project since the Chinese left.
AKK’s objective is to pump natural gas from Niger Delta fields entering Ajaokuta from Oben, in Nigeria’s mid-west, to Kano in the north of the country. There is also the probability that the gas will continue from Kano to Algeria, en route to Europe in a subsequent project named Trans Sahara Gas Pipeline. That subsequent project is not anywhere yet in concrete form.
The AKK emerged as part of the National Gas Master Plan, approved in 2008, which envisaged connection of the gas networks in the western and eastern parts of the country, building new transport pipelines from the south to Ajaokuta Steel, on to Abuja and then to the northernmost reaches of the country. The first part of the infrastructure required the construction of Central Processing Facilities (CPFs) in the Niger Delta region to process wet gas for supply to onshore gas transportation networks and industrial plants.
Although it has taken over two years since the groundbreaking to get to 43% stage, the harmonised schedule between NNPC and the two contractors constructing the facility, is end of 2023. “I can’t let my mind imagine anything outside 2023”, one contractor tells Africa Oil+Gas Report. “The focus helps”. The NNPC Ltd, as a rule, doesn’t respond to interview request by AOGR. This is a developing story.
