Gabon wants to fully exploit its gas resources by providing its population with maximum electricity.
Gabon is embarking on a new era of growth based on its natural gas. Representatives of the Libreville government, including the development director of the Gabon Power Company (GPC), Joseph Diboma, and the Anglo-Swiss giant Perenco have signed a memorandum of understanding for the construction of a gas power plant to electrify the country’s remote southern provinces, according to a statement received by APA on Wednesday.
The project is part of wider plans to exploit the central African country’s “abundant but neglected gas resources.”
Under the terms of the agreement, the two companies will “jointly develop an advanced power plant” at Mayumba on the southern coast to supply the southern provinces of Nyanga and Ngounié with electricity produced from gas “extracted from Perenco’s nearby offshore oil and gas fields.”
The oil and gas giant will invest 24 billion CFA francs in the initial phase of the project, which will electrify 80,000 households and create around 450 jobs. They will carry out the various tasks that will lead to the construction of a “compression and gas transport infrastructure by underwater pipeline to the site, where GPC has committed to invest a further 50 billion CFA francs in the power plant itself.”
This should provide an installed capacity of around 20 MW or 180 GWh per year. “This will largely cover the 150 MW that the government’s Acceleration and Transformation Plan estimates is needed to meet the energy needs of the southern part of the country,” the statement said.
Gabon has natural gas reserves “estimated at 1.2 trillion cubic feet, mostly offshore in the form of gas associated with the country’s oil fields.” However, gas production will peak in 2021 at 70 billion cubic feet.
This figure is expected to rise as the government seeks to eliminate flaring and use its gas resources to electrify local households, combat climate change and increase export revenues by meeting growing demand for liquefied natural gas in European markets in the context of the Russo-Ukrainian war, which has severely disrupted the global oil and gas market.
ODL/ac/lb/abj/APA