President Bola Tinubu has urged international oil companies to give Nigerian firms more contracts as the ELPS compressor project continues. He met Lee Engineering chairman Leemon Ikpea at the State House on 22 October.
The company is constructing two compressor stations in Edo State for the Escravos-Lagos Pipeline System, known as ELPS. Presidential spokesman Bayo Onanuga said the work was intended to help the expanded pipeline reach its designed gas transportation capacity.
Tinubu called for greater use of Nigerian-made equipment. Ikpea said Lee Engineering’s Warri yard was manufacturing some components for the stations.
The presidency put the expanded pipeline’s design capacity at 2.3 billion standard cubic feet a day, compared with 1.1 billion previously. It said compression was needed to raise operating pressure.
The statement did not announce a commissioning date or publish measured gas flows through the new stations. Its capacity figure describes the system’s intended performance, rather than a verified volume currently being delivered.
The project serves an established gas corridor supplying western Nigeria. During a June inspection, Minister of State for Petroleum Resources (Gas) Ekperikpe Ekpo visited the compressor sites at Ologbo and Okada with NNPC officials and the contractor.
In a 29 June report, ThisDay cited a Nigerian Gas Infrastructure Company progress submission to the downstream regulator. Construction had reached 94.88 per cent in May, compared with 92.7 per cent in January, according to that account. Those figures describe construction progress at the time, not today’s operating status.
The same report described the stations as a way to increase flows through existing infrastructure without laying another transmission pipeline. It identified thermal power plants, cement manufacturers and fertiliser producers among the intended industrial beneficiaries.
The engineering work also predates the current administration. An NNPC report prepared for the January 2022 Federation Account Allocation Committee meeting listed the ELPS midline compressor project in Edo State. It recorded completed front-end engineering design updates and tender documents, alongside site-related preparations.
That document treated the compressor scheme separately from the ELPS II pipeline expansion. The distinction shows that an expanded transmission line and the equipment needed to improve its utilisation have been tracked as separate parts of the wider gas network.
NNPC continued to list ELPS among infrastructure requiring completion in its 29 September 2026 results announcement. The company placed it alongside the Ajaokuta-Kaduna-Kano and Obiafu-Obrikom-Oben pipelines in its investment outlook.
The September release set a national gas production ambition of 12 billion standard cubic feet a day by 2030. That company-wide target covers a broader production portfolio and should not be read as the capacity of the Escravos-Lagos pipeline alone.
Earlier June reporting put the expanded ELPS capacity at approximately 2.2 billion standard cubic feet a day, while the presidency’s latest statement uses 2.3 billion. The October statement does not explain that difference. Neither figure establishes actual throughput from the compressor stations.
For industrial customers, the project’s stated purpose remains higher-pressure, more reliable gas transport. The June inspection account described completion and commissioning as the next steps before the facilities could deliver their expected operational benefits.
Archive photograph: President Bola Tinubu meeting U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Abuja on 23 January 2024. Chuck Kennedy / U.S. Department of State, public domain. Not the Lee Engineering meeting. Image source and rights.
