LNG from Shell to cover 40% of annual power generation needs

AMMAN — Royal Dutch Shell will provide Jordan with 59.13 trillion British thermal units of liquefied natural gas (LNG) per year over the next two years, an official said Thursday.

“Royal Dutch Shell won a two-year contract to provide us with LNG in 2016 and in 2017,” National Electric Power Company (NEPCO) Director General Abdel Fattah Daradkeh told The Jordan Times.

The 59.13 trillion British thermal units of LNG a year cover about 40 per cent of Jordan’s annual electricity generation needs, said Daradkeh.

In July, NEPCO floated a tender to buy 59.13 trillion British thermal units of LNG a year for a period of four years.

“We awarded the contract to Shell for two years only as few companies submitted bids to supply us with LNG for four years. In addition, our main objective was to get supplies for two years at this stage,” the official explained.

Under the two-year deal with Shell, the company will provide Jordan with 18 to 20 shipments of LNG per year. Each shipment will be about 3.2 to 3.3 trillion British thermal units, according to Daradkeh.

Jordan, which enjoys a strategic relationship with Egypt, is also eyeing imports of natural gas from the North African country following the discovery of a giant gas field there, said the official.

“There is strong cooperation with our brotherly Egyptians in this regard and we are looking forward to importing gas from the field,” he added.

In addition to the two-year deal with Shell, Jordan signed a separate agreement with the same company in early 2015 under which Shell provides the Kingdom with 150 million cubic feet of LNG per day for the next five years.

“We greatly rely on LNG for power generation at this stage. In addition to the deals with Shell, we also floated a tender to buy LNG from international spot markets,” said Daradkeh.

Jordan, which imports about 97 per cent of its energy needs, became an importer of LNG after the opening of a terminal for receiving it in Aqaba in mid-2015.

The Kingdom was forced to switch to importing diesel and heavy fuel for power generation after repeated cuts in natural gas supply from Egypt and a complete halt to supplies in since early 2014.