Drums of oil

The Nigerian Gas Association (NGA) has said that Nigeria has now dropped from the eighth position to 20th in terms of natural gas production in the last few years. It added that at just 1.2 billion cubic feet per day (bcf/d), the country, one of the world’s gas-rich nations has also slumped in the consumption of natural gas. President of NGA and Managing Director of Shell Nigeria Gas, Mr. Ed Ubong, who stated this at the Ghana Gas Forum (NGF), stated that the West African sub-region has enough gas to power its 350 million people from the electricity and industrial perspective. He, however lamented that the sub-region had not been able to utilise enough of its natural gas to power its industries as the percentage of gas used by industries was still very low. He cited Nigeria as a typical example of a country with huge gas resources but with low production and utilisation. Nigeria has 206 trillion cubic feet of proven natural gas reserves and over 600tcf unproven reserves but produces about 7.8bcf daily while domestic consumption -as in power generation and industrialisation, is just about 1.2bcf/d.
THISDAY