Director of the DPR, Mr. Modecai Ladan who made the disclosure at the Annual General Meeting (AGM) of Nigeria Gas Association (NGA) in Lagos yesterday, stated that updated statistics on the new national gas reserves indicated that the country now has 190 trillion deposit of natural gas, making it the seventh biggest reserve holder in the world and the largest in Africa.
Ladan, who was represented by Assistant Director, Domestic Gas, DPR, Mrs Chioma Njoku, assured stakeholders that Nigeria had the potential of becoming a global super power because it ranked third in gas production after Algeria and Egypt, despite being the largest in terms of gas reserves.
“It is a critical strategic consideration that must be embraced. We need to design framework that will focus on gas exploration with full support of industry stakeholders.
“Coincidentally, most gas discoveries and the reserves were accidentally discovered during crude oil exploration and stakeholders have been calling on the federal government to institute marginal bid rounds for gas exploration”, she said.
On his part, the Senior Technical Adviser, Upstream and Gas, to the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Mr Gbite Adeniji, said, “We need to consider opening up gas supply from the inland basins. We can’t rely on the Niger Delta alone. There is a lot of gas in the inland basins. It is time we considered developing infrastructure to explore gas in the offshore.”
He noted that about 11 of the nation’s power plants had become dormant due to gas constraints.
“An alternative system from the offshore will help. In the inland basins, there are gas reserves that could lend themselves to small power plants. We should think about flexibility. We are working hard on gas terms for PSC concessions. We should consider gas development a matter of strategic importance. Therefore, we need to develop an appropriate legal and regulatory framework.
“We now have to open a big pathway for new players in the gas sector,” he said.
“The fiscal regime has proven to be the most effective driver of gas development in the country. But most of the projects we have seen are export projects.
“The fiscal strategy should focus on prioritizing exploration and production activities for gas with proper incentive structure that is globally competitive.
“We need pricing reform. On the supply side, there is a lot of potential. We need market-based pricing for wholesale gas supply. We must have transitional pricing and then we open it up for market-led pricing,” Adeniji further stated.
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