The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has commenced steps to fast track its construction of a pipeline to convey gas from Abuja through Kaduna to Kano under the federal government’s gas master plan.
As part of the new steps, the NNPC said it had established a project steering committee which would from now take up the responsibility to ensure efficient and accelerated implementation of the Abuja-Kaduna-Kano (AKK) gas pipeline project.
The corporation disclosed this development in a statement issued by its Group General Manager Public Affairs Division, Ohi Alegbe, in Abuja.
The statement quoted the Group Managing Director of NNPC, Dr. Joseph Dawha, to have said while progress was being made in the execution of the adjoining OB3 gas pipeline project as well as the looping of the Escravos- Lagos Pipeline System (ELPS), the implementation of the AKK project had been slow and out of sync with government’s desire for its accelerated implementation.
Conceived and approved under the National Gas Master Plan by the Federal Executive Council (FEC), the gas pipeline project is designed to transport gas for power and manufacturing industry usage to these key northern axes from Ajaokuta to Kaduna and to Kano.
Dawha stated at the inauguration of the committee that the AKK assignment was a priority project to the country as one of the cardinal programmes of the transformation agenda of the President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration.
“In order to strengthen this critical government national priority project and have it refocused for accelerated implementation, there is the compelling need for the establishment of a dedicated AKK project steering team with clear governance structure,” Dawha said.
NNPC noted that steering committee comprises Dawha as its chairman, and NNPC’s Group Executive Directors of Gas and Power, Exploration and Production as well as Commercial and Investment as members.
Also listed as a member of the committee is the corporation’s Coordinator, Corporate Planning and Strategy.
The committee will be responsible for providing general guidance and direction for the project, grant approval for business models, equity participation, budgets, contracting strategy and appropriate reporting to the Minister of Petroleum Resources, Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke, as well as endorse strategic investors and recommend as appropriate to government for approval.
Also constituted was a support team for committee, which consists of a group of 10 personnel drawn across various divisions of the NNPC and headed by General Manager, Corporate Planning and Strategy of the corporation Mallam Rabiu Bello.
Bello, the statement said, would coordinate the activities of the project Engineering Procurement and Construction (EPC) team, in addition to the support team.
The support team has in its terms of reference, the mandate to review all existing contractual, technical, commercial, financial issues relating to the project among other items.
