Missing the boat

From Cyprus to the Niger Delta, developers hope to add lucrative new LNG capacity. The timing is bad

WHILE East African liquefied natural gas projects advance slowly, West African prospects for fresh LNG capacity are more mixed, if not scant. Like developers are finding elsewhere, this is an inauspicious moment to build pricey new upstream projects. Nigeria LNG, which runs the continent’s largest plant, the 22m-tonne-a-year (t/y) six-train facility on Bonny Island, has long talked of adding a seventh train. But for now it’s unlikely, given the low returns on offer; while a resurgence of violence in the Niger Delta, which has disrupted supply in recent months has not helped either. More likely to reach fruition are FLNG projects in Equatorial Guinea and Cameroon, scheduled to be operational