Brass LNG and the politics of Nigeria's final investment decision

The Brass LNG facility is being built on Brass Island in Bayelsa State and will consist of two trains, each with the production nominal capacity of 5 mm tons of LNG per year; facilities for liquefied butane and propane extraction, segregation, and treatment; two 185,000 cm LNG storage tanks; two 110,000 cm LPG storage tanks; one 500,000-barrel capacity NGL tank; marine facilities for the products export; and accommodation for plant operators.
Brass LNG products will be loaded onto vessels by cryogenic pipelines and then transported to terminal facilities in the Atlantic Basin, while the natural gas will then be transported to the United States and Mexico. The project is expected to produce 10 mm tons of liquefied natural gas a year during its 20-year lifetime.

Brass LNG Limited has also entered into a project management contract with Bechtel Corporation of the United States to manage some aspects of construction work on the Brass LNG project. The contract covers the co-ordination of all plant site activity for construction of the Brass LNG project comprising two trains of 5 mm tpy, as well as other works involved in construction of the plant. These include site preparation, construction camp and construction dock; permanent operator housing and amenities, marine facilities, common facilities and support services, tankage, utilities and off-sites, and others.
Bechtel was chosen because of its proven track record, with world-class experience in the implementation of the ConocoPhillips Optimised Cascade Process, which has also been adopted for the Brass LNG plant. Bechtel completed the Front End Engineering Design for the plant in 2006.

In May 2008, Brass LNG held its 4th Annual General Meeting and 29th board meeting in Abuja, with high hopes that the Final Investment Decision (FID) for the project would be taken in December 2008. Federal Government, through Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), holds 49 % equity of the company, while ENI, ConocoPhillips and Total each holds 17%.
Deliberations at the board of directors meeting consequently centred on how to reach timely agreement with the project's shareholders on the enablers before the end of May in order to avert a delay in taking the FID by December. A revenue profile of upwards of $ 50 bn is expected to be earned by Federal Government from the project.

The FID for the project has suffered several postponements and the latest one is just one in a long list of challenges the project has faced so far.
However, the key issue that was said to have truncated the taking of the FID once more is the issue of feed gas for the project. The issue is the key matter that is delaying the project's FID for one more year.