Industry Oil and gas Headquarters Abuja Parent organization Nigeria LNG | Products services: LNG-tankers Founded 1989 | |
Type private, 100% subsidiary | ||
Bonny Gas Transport or Bonny Gas Transport Bermuda Shell is a subsidiary of Nigeria LNG or NLNG which itself is a joint-venture of Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Royal Dutch Shell, Total S.A. and Eni. It owns and operates a number of LNG tankers.
Contents
The company
BGT was established in Bermuda in 1989 by the NLNG holding-company. It takes care of the transportation of the produce of this company. LNG is found in the fields on Bonny Island in the Niger Delta in Nigeria by the NNPC and then sold to Shell, Total and ENI. In 2005 the bulk of this gas goes to Europe and about 2% to Northern-America. The completion of Train 6 in 2008 increased the output of the Bonny Island fields, and of this new output approximately 50% goes to Europe and the other 50% to North-America.
Ownership
As it is a 100% daughter of NLNG the ownership of BGT is the same as that of NNLNG and thus:
NNPC = 49% Shell = 25,6% Total = 15% ENI = 10,4%Financing
The income of BGT comes from long-term charters of their ships to NLNG: BGT's activities are limited to charter ships to NLNG and all gas found at the fields in the Bonny Island project by NNPC is sold to the above companies and the transport over the Atlantic Ocean to Europe or America is done via BGT ships.
Until 2006 BGT had a range of different (bank)loans to finance the buying and updating the LNG tankers. On October 2006 a deal was made with a consortium of banks to re-finance US$ 680 million. The original loans were related to 9 ships; this new deal also included the room to extend the fleet to the current 13 ships: in the years following the completion of this deal the output of the Bonny gas fields was expected and it was foreseen that additional shipping-capacity was required (see also the main-article on Nigeria LNG).
Because the gas and oil projects in the Niger Delta, including Bonny Island, are seen as high-risk investments, the financing of the ships to transport any produce from the area, are done via a separate company (BGT): even when the worst come to the worst and there would be no gas to be transported from the area the ships can be used anywhere in the world; thus financing the ships was seen as lower risk then financing the mother company itself.
In January 2012 NNPC said that they were trying to raise US $ 1 billion to renew the fleet of their daughter-company BGT
Activities
BGT was set up by Nigeria NLG to transport all LNG gas produced by its mother company in Nigeria to the customers in North America and Europe.
Fleet
The website Helderline provides an overview of 13 of these ships. All ships that are managed by BGT also sail for BGT
Fleetlist
Per April, 2012, the company owns and operates the following LNG carriers: