NLNG Train-7 To Boost Nigeria’s Gas Exports, LPG Supply From 2027

by NSE ANTHONY-UKO Abuja AND CHIKA IZUORA Lagos

Nigeria is targeting a significant boost in gas export earnings and domestic LPG supply as Nigeria LNG Limited works toward starting up its $10 billion Train 7 project by the end of 2027, a development the company says will lift its production capacity by 35 per cent and increase supply of cooking gas to the domestic market by 50 per cent.

The managing director and chief executive officer of NLNG, Adeleye Falade, disclosed the timeline while speaking with journalists on the sidelines of the Gastech conference in Bangkok, Thailand, where he said construction at Bonny Island, Rivers State, was now over 92 per cent complete, with pre-commissioning activities already under way.

The project, delayed for years by the COVID-19 pandemic and the disruption the Russia-Ukraine war caused to global supply chains, is expected to push Nigeria’s export earnings higher and move the country from its current position as a leading African supplier toward becoming the world’s fifth-largest LNG exporter, at a time the federal government is pushing to diversify revenue away from crude oil.

Train 7 was originally targeted for completion years earlier before COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine pushed back the construction timeline, and its projected cost has been cited anywhere between $5.7 billion and $10 billion across different project phases.

Background: Trains 1-6

NLNG was established in 1989 as a joint venture between NNPC, which holds 49 per cent, Shell Gas with 25.6 per cent, TotalEnergies with 15 per cent, and Eni with 10.4 per cent, to monetise Nigeria’s gas reserves.

Construction began in 1996 at Bonny Island with what was called the Base Project — Trains 1 and 2. Train 1 started production in August 1999, and Train 2 followed in February 2000, each with a capacity of about 3.3 million tonnes per annum.

Train 3 followed in November 2002, adding roughly 3 million tonnes per annum and Nigeria’s first LPG output the following year.

Trains 4 and 5, built under the NLNGPlus project by the TSKJ consortium of Technip, Snamprogetti, KBR and JGC, came on stream in November 2005 and February 2006 respectively — Train 4 was, at the time, the largest LNG train in the world at 5.2 million tonnes per annum.

Train 6 followed in December 2007, bringing total capacity to 22 million tonnes per annum of LNG plus about 5 million tonnes per annum of LPG and condensates.

Since Train 6, capacity stood still for nearly two decades, even as Nigeria’s proven gas reserves — estimated at 202 trillion cubic feet, the ninth-largest in the world — remained largely untapped for further LNG expansion.

Front-end engineering design for Train 7 began in 2018, with a reconfiguration that introduced a common liquefaction unit giving the new train the equivalent capacity of two trains from the earlier era. Shareholders took the Final Investment Decision in December 2019 in Abuja, and the engineering, procurement and construction contract was awarded in 2020, at the height of the pandemic, to the Saipem, Chiyoda and Daewoo consortium.

What Train 7 changes

Train 7 will raise NLNG’s liquefaction capacity from 22 million tonnes per annum to 30 million tonnes per annum — a 35 per cent increase made up of an estimated 4.2 million tonnes of new LNG processing capacity plus a 3.4 million tonne debottlenecking boost across the existing six trains.

The expansion is intended to move Nigeria from its current position as a leading African supplier toward becoming the world’s fifth-largest LNG exporter.

Beyond export volumes, the company says the expansion will raise domestic supply of liquefied petroleum gas, or cooking gas, from 500,000 tonnes to 750,000 tonnes annually — a 50 per cent increase that could ease pressure on cooking gas prices for millions of Nigerian households currently competing with export demand for the same product.

Gas supply, the real bottleneck

NLNG remains under a force majeure declared in 2022, after widespread flooding disrupted feed gas supply to the plant, Falade said.

The company plans to lift the measure once it reaches a 90 per cent utilisation rate; it is currently running at 82 to 83 per cent.

“We still have a delta of about 15 per cent that we need to close,” he said, adding that the constraint is not technical but supply-side.

“Operationally, we are able to do that, but our biggest constraint is gas supply, and we’re working with all the relevant people, including the government, to be able to get more gas to flow into the plant.”

Upstream projects are being lined up to help close that gap. TotalEnergies’ Final Investment Decision on its Ubeta gas field was designed specifically to feed NLNG, part of a broader push to secure continuous supply ahead of Train 7’s commissioning.

In the meantime, NLNG says it is prioritising existing customer obligations and maximising output within current gas availability, even as interest in Nigerian cargoes has grown following supply disruptions through the Strait of Hormuz linked to the Iran conflict.

“People are looking at more diversified, reliable sources of supply,” Falade said.

The earnings case

The scale of what is at stake becomes clearer when set against NLNG’s record to date. The company said in July, during the presentation of its Facts and Figures 2026 report, that it has generated $149.6 billion in cumulative revenue since operations began 37 years ago.

Of that, it has paid $47.2 billion in dividends to shareholders — the federal government, through NNPC, holds the largest single stake — and remitted more than $10.8 billion in taxes since becoming tax-compliant in 2009.

Falade said NLNG has been Nigeria’s most tax-compliant corporate organisation for five consecutive years running, and that about 60 per cent of the payments it makes for feed gas eventually accrue to the government through its interests in upstream suppliers.

That earnings base is already growing ahead of Train 7. Nigeria’s LNG exports rose by one million tonnes in 2025 to 14.78 million tonnes, valued at roughly $14.63 billion (about N20 trillion), up from 13.78 million tonnes worth $13.78 billion (N18.89 trillion) in 2024, according to the 2026 World LNG Report.

That placed Nigeria seventh among the world’s largest LNG exporters, behind the United States, Qatar, Australia, Russia, Malaysia and Indonesia, and accounted for 3.4 per cent of global LNG trade, which itself hit a record 436.98 million tonnes in 2025. If Train 7 lifts output by 35 per cent on top of that trajectory, the revenue base from which dividends, taxes and feed-gas payments are drawn stands to expand proportionally, assuming global prices hold and the new volumes find buyers on schedule.

Jobs and local content

The project has already put thousands of Nigerians to work before a single additional cargo has shipped. At peak construction, more than 13,000 Nigerians were employed on Train 7, with the project credited with creating over 10,000 direct jobs and training thousands more in welding, scaffolding, electrical work and other specialist trades.

NLNG says it treated Nigerian content on the project as a development opportunity rather than a compliance obligation.

Of the roughly 4,000 tonnes of structural steel required, a significant share was supplied by Nigerian firms including Dorman Long, Aveon and African Industries, while all medium- and high-voltage cables were manufactured locally by companies including Coleman, Mecom, Medgene and Cable Metal. NLNG also invested in steel fabrication and galvanising facilities that will remain available to the wider industry after the project’s completion, and the company says it worked with Nigerian universities to deepen local research and technical competencies.

NLNG is already looking past the current expansion. The company says discussions are under way on a possible Train 8, alongside the potential revival of long-stalled rival projects, Brass LNG and Olokola LNG. Separately, the U.S. Trade and Development Agency has awarded funding for a feasibility study into a small-scale LNG plant in southern Nigeria, to be developed by Powergas Nigeria Ltd, which would supply industrial customers and remote communities in the north through a virtual pipeline of trucked LNG rather than fixed infrastructure.

USTDA Deputy Director Thomas Hardy said the project was designed to address energy security in underserved areas while opening opportunities for American LNG technology suppliers.

Train 7 sits within the federal government’s Decade of Gas initiative, which frames gas as the transition fuel for industrialisation, power generation and export earnings as Nigeria works to reduce its dependence on crude oil. Nigeria’s exports have already been climbing on the strength of its six existing trains, with utilisation averaging over 86 per cent, aided by improved security in the Niger Delta.