MOSCOW (MRC) -- Italy's Eni said Monday it has signed a new long-term contract for the purchase of 1.5 million mt/year of LNG from the Nigeria LNG (NLNG) project, less than a week after France's Total also agreed a new 1.5 million mt/year deal, reported S&P Global.
The LNG under both deals will be produced from the existing Trains 1, 2 and 3 of the NLNG facility at Bonny Island.
NLNG last year began remarketing LNG volumes from the first three trains as initial sales contracts with key buyers including Turkey's Botas and Portugal's Energia expire this year and next.
Eni already signed up for 1.1 million mt/year last December, while global trader Vitol also agreed late last year a 10-year deal for 0.5 million mt/year.
NLNG - a joint venture between state-owned NNPC (49%), Shell (25.6%), Total (15%) and Eni (10.4%) - currently has a production capacity of some 22.5 million mt/year, but plans to increase it to 30 million mt/year with the addition of a seventh train.
The shareholders in NNPC made the final investment decision for Train 7 in December last year.
Eni said the two deals with NLNG would allow it, from 2021, to "increase its global LNG portfolio and to support further the development of its presence in the main destination markets worldwide."
As MRC informed earlier, Italy’s Versalis (part of Eni) took its cracker in Dunkirk, France offline in early September, 2019, due to a fire which broke out at the company’s petrochemical plant. Local media sources also reported that the fire was brought under control with no reported injuries and the company was assessing the required repairs. The cracker has a production capacity of 380,000 tons/year of ethylene and 95,000 tons/year of propylene.
Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP).
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 1,904,410 tonnes in the first eleven months of 2019, up by 6% year on year. Shipments of all PE grades increased. PE shipments increased from both domestic producers and foreign suppliers. The PP consumption in the Russian market was 1,161,830 tonnes in January-November 2019, up by 7% year on year. Deliveries of all grades of propylene polymers increased, with the homopolymer PP segment accounting for the largest increase.
ENI is an Italian multinational oil and gas company headquartered in Rome. It has operations in in 79 countries, and is currently Italy's largest industrial company with a market capitalization of EUR68 billion (USD 90 billion), as of August 14, 2013. The Italian government owns a 30.3% golden share in the company, 3.93% held through the state Treasury and 26.37% held through the Cassa depositi e prestiti. Another 39.40% of the shares are held by BNP Paribas.
MRC