Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan ignored the protocol in Eket, in the southeastern Niger Delta basin last Thursday, August 14, proceeding directly to the gas processing plant, as he arrived in a motorcade for the commissioning, with some of his cabinet ranked ministers.

His move led to a scramble among the several hundred guests, many of whom had waited for upwards of five hours, enduring bouts of rain under waterlogged canopies.

Frontier Oil Limited and Seven Energy Limited, joint partners in the two hundred million standard cubic feet per day (200MMscf/d) processing plant, had flown 15 journalists from Lagos into town the previous day, accommodating them overnight and busing them, along with the companies’ directors and other dignitaries, into the venue as early as 7.30am.

BG, the British Gas company, was able to lift only one cargo of Liquefied Natural Gas from Egypt in the second quarter (2Q) of 2014. And the likelihood of it receiving additional cargoes of the product from Egypt “is very limited for the foreseeable future”, the company has admitted.

World Bank Grant Helps replace LPG with piped Natural gas

The World Bank’s Board of Directors has approved a loan of $500 million for a project aimed to expand natural gas access to 1.5 million Egyptian households in eleven governorates, including three governorates (Sohag, Qena and Aswan) located in Upper Egypt, where poverty levels are the highest.

The Egypt Household Natural Gas Connection Project will support the Egyptian government’s programme to replace household consumption of Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG), which is mostly imported, with grid-connected natural gas. About 52 percent of the neighborhoods targeted by the project have poverty rates higher than Egypt’s national average.

By Sully Manope, in Windhoek

South African Department of Energy’s Gas Utilisation Master Plan (GUMP), expected to be presented for public debate before the end of June 2014, will paint a picture of where the government wants investments to go in whatever emerges as a gas industry, according to the department.

The country is in sore need of increased electricity no doubt, but the GUMP, drafted with specialist support from Wood McKenzie and Mott MacDonald, envisages a broad based gas industry that is far more comprehensive than just gas to power services. It views the supply-demand dynamics between 2015 and 2050.