By Tosin Olatokunbo
Timipre Sylva, Nigeria’s Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, has disclosed that the country will soon become a major gas supplier to Europe in the face of a glut of energy supply to the continent from Russia.
The minister said the Russia/Ukraine war has opened an opportunity for the country to position itself as an alternate supplier of Gas to Europe.
Sylva spoke a day after the President Vladimir Putin-led Russia blocked gas supply to Europe through the Nord Stream pipeline. Supply will not resume until the West lifts the sanctions imposed on Russia, according to the Kremlin.
In June, the federal government approved the construction of the Nigeria-Morocco gas pipeline which will transport gas to some parts of West Africa, Africa, and Europe.
Speaking on Tuesday during a panel session at the 50th Anniversary Edition of Gastech Conference 2022 in Milan, Italy, the minister said Nigeria is trying to take advantage of the Russia/Ukraine crisis.
According to him, “Today we are seeing gas being weaponized and every country will at least require some alternative supply.
“So, we are positioning ourselves to be an alternative supplier to Europe. We are already working with Algeria to build the Trans-Sahara Gas Pipeline that is going to take our gas all the way to Europe.
“We are also having a partnership with Morocco to extend the West Africa Gas Pipeline to Morocco and across the Mediterranean to Europe.
“We believe that Europe needs this gas and it is a win-win for all of us and it is in their interest to reduce these discriminatory investments that their banks are doing.”
He said the recent passage of the Petroleum Industry Governance Bill will help the country to become a major player in international gas supply politics, adding that a policy framework has been put in place to attract investment to the sector.
He said,“For Europe, we don’t know how the winter is going to be but for us, we know that gas is going to be with us for some time and it is in our collective interest for us to provide funding for gas.
“For Nigeria, we just need a few interventions. We need collaboration, and of course we need funding and then technology.
“By the time we get this together, we should be able to unlock a lot of gas.
“Today, we have over 200TCF of proven gas reserves and we know that if we really target gas exploration we can increase this figure to up to 600TCF of gas.
“As a country, we are also increasing our investment in Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG). We were producing about 22MTPA of LNG but we are building a train to increase it to 30MTPA.
“We are also planning to increase our gas production which is about 8 billion cubic feet per day (cf/d) to about 12. 2 billion cf/d.
“We have declared the year 2021 to year 2030 as the Decade of Gas, so we are focused on actually investing in gas.”
