Nigeria's cars 'soon to be powered by natural gas' - biogas too?
Quicknote biogas potential
Earlier, we pointed to Pakistan's impressive and successful effort to getting the nation's cars to convert from gasoline to compressed natural gas. We also indicated that there is a global push towards the extensive use of biogas, both as an energy source for stationary as well as for mobile applications. Combine the two developments, and in the future, we might see biogas displace liquid fuels, especially in the global South. The easiest way to get there is for countries to first switch to compressed natural gas. Once such a CNG infrastructure and the cars that go with it are in place, there is no stopping the use of biogas later on.
Nigeria, both an oil exporter and a biofuel producer, is exactly following this route. The Nigerian Gas Company (NGC) recently announced that cars in the country will be running on compressed natural gas in an attempt to find alternative fuel sources amidst the rising price of petrol. The NGC said staff of the company had already left the country for Argentina to be trained on how to establish and run the CNG stations. Chairman and board of director of the NGC, Solomon Agiemwonyi, made the assertion at the company’s 13th Annual General Meeting (AGM) for the years 2003 and 2004 in Abuja on Thursday.
His words: "We are establishing the first natural gas filling stations at Warri-Benin-Lagos Expressway before December this year. We believe it is much cheaper than petrol and diesel, and it is environmentally friendly." He said in doing so, Nigeria would be following in the footsteps of Pakistan where more than a million vehicles have been converted to Compressed Natural Gas (CNG), and 985 CNG stations are in operation with another 200 under construction in different parts of the country as at July 2006.
Ogiewonyi said the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) owes the NGC N8 billion ($62.3 million), about 60% of debts owed to the company, but said it would continue to sell gas to the company now broken into 18 independent entities, while it strives to convert the debt into equity in any of the 18 splinter companies of the PHCN. "The issue of customer indebtedness has been a major concern to the NGC. At the end of May 2006, total debt owed to the NGC was N13.398 billion ($103.6 million), made up of N10.22 billion ($79.4 million) owed by the Nigerian government’s companies and N3.176 billion ($24.1 million) by the private sector. "PHCN alone owes $62.3 million representing 60% of the total debt."
[Entry ends here]
biomass :: bioenergy :: biofuels :: energy :: sustainability :: CNG :: methane :: biogas :: Nigeria :: Africa ::
Article continues
Earlier, we pointed to Pakistan's impressive and successful effort to getting the nation's cars to convert from gasoline to compressed natural gas. We also indicated that there is a global push towards the extensive use of biogas, both as an energy source for stationary as well as for mobile applications. Combine the two developments, and in the future, we might see biogas displace liquid fuels, especially in the global South. The easiest way to get there is for countries to first switch to compressed natural gas. Once such a CNG infrastructure and the cars that go with it are in place, there is no stopping the use of biogas later on.
Nigeria, both an oil exporter and a biofuel producer, is exactly following this route. The Nigerian Gas Company (NGC) recently announced that cars in the country will be running on compressed natural gas in an attempt to find alternative fuel sources amidst the rising price of petrol. The NGC said staff of the company had already left the country for Argentina to be trained on how to establish and run the CNG stations. Chairman and board of director of the NGC, Solomon Agiemwonyi, made the assertion at the company’s 13th Annual General Meeting (AGM) for the years 2003 and 2004 in Abuja on Thursday.
His words: "We are establishing the first natural gas filling stations at Warri-Benin-Lagos Expressway before December this year. We believe it is much cheaper than petrol and diesel, and it is environmentally friendly." He said in doing so, Nigeria would be following in the footsteps of Pakistan where more than a million vehicles have been converted to Compressed Natural Gas (CNG), and 985 CNG stations are in operation with another 200 under construction in different parts of the country as at July 2006.
Ogiewonyi said the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) owes the NGC N8 billion ($62.3 million), about 60% of debts owed to the company, but said it would continue to sell gas to the company now broken into 18 independent entities, while it strives to convert the debt into equity in any of the 18 splinter companies of the PHCN. "The issue of customer indebtedness has been a major concern to the NGC. At the end of May 2006, total debt owed to the NGC was N13.398 billion ($103.6 million), made up of N10.22 billion ($79.4 million) owed by the Nigerian government’s companies and N3.176 billion ($24.1 million) by the private sector. "PHCN alone owes $62.3 million representing 60% of the total debt."
[Entry ends here]
biomass :: bioenergy :: biofuels :: energy :: sustainability :: CNG :: methane :: biogas :: Nigeria :: Africa ::
Article continues
Sunday, August 27, 2006
Google Guys travel to Brazil to check out ethanol
The pantheon of VIP's eyeing or visiting Brazil to learn more about its successful ethanol program is rapidly filling up: president Jacques Chirac, China's president Hu Jintao, OPEC president Edmund Daukoru, IEA chief Claude Mandil, Bill Gates, president George W Bush, and now reportedly Larry Page and Sergey Brin, founders of Google.
There has been quite some blogosphere buzz about the Google Boys in Brazil. Apparently they visited the country incognito a few months ago, but they were recognized pretty quickly and several brazilian bloggers broke the story.
Ethablog, our preferred resource on news about Brazilian biofuels, translates one of the blogs who had the scoop:
The billionaires' visit was later confirmed by mainstream news outlets, and a picture of them meeting with Brazilian academics at the University of Minas Gerais did the rest. But let's not milk this story too much. It doesn't really come as a surprise. Ethanol is feverishly hot, in Silicon Valley too, and Brazil's success just symbolises the reasons why the enthusiasm is not unfounded.
The two Google Guys' noble motto is "do no evil", and with this in mind, we are interested to learn why they were in Brazil. If they are looking into investing in ethanol in the US, then it's a mystery why they would visit sugarcane country. After all, the development of the ethanol industry in America is entirely different from that in Brazil. If they want to put a few billions in the developing world, then definitely samba country is a great example to learn from, but then "doing no evil" becomes a very difficult task. Mr Page and Mr Brin will have to invest in social sustainability first and foremost, because large-scale biofuel production in the third world can never get around people - people who live off the land, people who want radical land reform and social justice, people whose food security and access to energy must get priority, people who are willing to work on a small scale where they are in control of local resources, people who have a tradition of working collectively using social technologies like unions and cooperatives, people who have had bad experiences with predatory multinationals and who have successfully resisted their grip. Indeed, there is a lot to learn, and we hope the Google Guys had an eye for these aspects too.
ethanol :: biodiesel :: biofuels :: page :: brin :: google :: investing :: sustainability :: Brazil ::
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posted by Biopact team at 11:49 PM 0 comments links to this post