Eni subsidiary Nigerian Agip Oil Company (NAOP) to Nigerian authorities on October 2008. The order for the main equipment in the compression island was placed in December of that year, with the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract awarded in April 2009 and construction started in June 2009. The first gas was flared down and delivered to the domestic market in April of 2010. Italian suppliers played a major role in designing and constructing the Ebocha facility. The engineering design for the compression island was carried out by Saipem Energy Services (SES), also a unit of Eni. The compressors were engineered and manufactured in Italy by GE-Nuovo Pignone, the Italian subsidiary of U.S. group General Electric. Construction activities were carried out by Saipem Nigeria jointly with Nigerian contractor Desicon. Eni has seen a steady reduction in its gas flaring in Nigeria in recent years. In 2007, Eni flared 4.7 billion standard cubic meters a year (BSCM/year) in the country, which came down to 2.9 BSCM/year in 2009. With the Ebocha project, that number was reduced even further, to about 2.25 BSCM/year in 2010. At the moment Eni is utilising, or not flaring, over 72 percent of all gas produced in the country. Eni’s efforts have been largely responsible for the overall decline in gas flaring seen in Nigeria, where total flaring was reduced from 16.2 BSCM/year to 11.9 BSCM/year in the 2006-2009 period. Eni is active in 77 countries throughout the world and has been
Eni’s technology works to reduce the flaring of gas in its Nigerian project sites (top)
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THE ITALIAN EDGE