The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) yesterday said the Ajaokuta-Kaduna-Kano (AKK) Gas Pipeline Project is almost at 70 per cent completion.

The NNPCL chief executive officer, Mele Kyari, disclosed this during an inspection tour of one of the project sites located in Ahoko, Kogi State.

NNPCL said the AKK gas pipeline and stations project is a flagship project that will further deepen the integration of the northern region of the country with the Niger Delta and other parts of the country.

The pipeline can transport two (2) billion standard cubic feet of natural gas per day to three (3) proposed independent power plants in Abuja, Kaduna, Kano, and other gas-based industries as well as other identified and proposed commercial off-takers along the entire pipeline route.

The project, according to NNPCL has the potential to greatly improve the Nation’s power generation capacity and the economy as a whole through industrialization as well as other economic uses.

Since the flag-off of the project by President Muhammadu Buhari in June 2020, the NNPCL said it has recorded significant feats and the project is well on course to deliver on schedule.

Speaking on Monday, Mr Kyari said the NNPCL has so far released the sum of $1.1bn to finance the project.

“The AKK Gas Pipeline is one massive project we are running as NNPC limited. It has immense value for Nigeria and its socio-economic growth. The project has not stopped for one day. We have continued to fund it despite the absence of third-party financing.

“We have so far spent over $1.1bn on this project from our cash flow. We are a commercial company today. We have inter-company laws within our company now. This company can fund this project, so we do not need any support to deliver this project now,” Mr Kyari said.

“As we speak now, we don’t owe a dollar to our contractors today. We paid all their invoices. There are over 30 active sites today in this project, and we are very hopeful that we will deliver this project,” he said.

He added that the overall engineering design for the linear section of the two segments of the project stands at 93.48 per cent.

“The overall procurement for the linear section for the two segments is at 88 per cent and 94 per cent of the total line pipes have been manufactured and 90 per cent are already in-country.

“Construction activities in both segments are ongoing. We have completed 400km of the linear section/mainline welding, representing 68 per cent of ROW from Ajaokuta in Kogi state to Kano,” the NNPCL said.

Kyari noted that also ongoing are several special constructions like Direct Pipe Installation (DPI) across the River Niger in Kogi State and other Horizontal Directional Drilling (HDD) across River Robo, Pai and Shika Rivers in Zaria, Kaduna State.

“Several back-end activities have commenced including field joint coating, trenching and lowering, and temporary cathodic protection and talks of pre-commissioning of some sections have equally commenced,” he said.

“For surveillance along the entire right of way to enable us to realise the aspiration of timely delivering the AKK Project for the benefit of all Nigerians,” he said.