Mitsubishi, Notore form joint venture for ammonia, urea complex in Nigeria
Notore Chemical Industries, owner of the only urea fertilizer plant in sub-Saharan Africa, has signed a joint venture agreement with Japan-based Mitsubishi to develop an ammonia, urea and other petrochemicals plant at its existing facility at Onne, Rivers State, Nigeria.
The project will involve the construction of an integrated plant complex with production capacities of 1,700 tpd of ammonia, 3,000 tpd of urea and 1,500 tpd of other petrochemicals.
An agreement was also signed with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) in Japan to carry out the pre-FEED for the project.
It is expected that early works, including FEED, should be concluded in the first quarter of 2013, project officials said.
The early works phase will be followed by 36 months of engineering, procurement and construction (EPC).
The new plant, which Notore says has the advantage of being built on a brownfield site with existing gas facilities and other infrastructure, is expected to come on-stream by 2016.
Natural gas, which is currently being flared in Nigeria, will be utilized as the raw material for the production of these chemicals.
The combined urea and petrochemicals plant project will have the additional advantage of being more environmentally friendly as excess carbon dioxide from the process would be further utilized for petrochemicals production, the company said.
The plant will create about 1,000 direct jobs and provide 10,500 indirect jobs nationwide.
Specific terms of the joint venture, as well as related financial information, were not disclosed.
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