Key highlights
- The NNPC is leading the implementation of Nigeria’s National Gas Expansion Program (NGEP), including the development of domestic gas pipeline infrastructure projects and the Nigeria-Morocco and Trans-Sahara Gas Pipelines.
- Once fully implemented, the NGEP aims to transform Nigeria into a gas-enabled economy, benefiting from its vast unproven gas reserves.
- Nigeria could learn from Saudi Arabia’s example of using oil revenues to develop renewable energy capacity, and use its oil production output to fund the NGEP while tackling political, economic, and security risks.
The Group Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited, Mele Kyari, has said that the company is playing a lead role in implementing the National Gas Expansion Program (NGEP).
He said this during his Keynote Address at the 2023 Society of Petroleum Engineers Oloibiri Lecture Series and Energy Forum held earlier this week in Abuja.
According to him, the NNPCL was involved in the process of enabling the realization of the set goals of the NGEP. He said:
- “NNPC is playing a leading role in the realization of the Federal Government’s National Gas Expansion Programme, which seeks to deepen natural gas utilization as an alternative transportation fuel, and an important feedstock for the development of gas-based industries.
- “We are working assiduously to ensure timely delivery of major domestic gas pipeline infrastructure projects including the Ajaokuta-Kaduna-Kano (AKK) gas pipeline corridor and associated power plants.
- “NNPC is also making progress on the planned Nigeria-Morocco and the Trans-Sahara Gas Pipelines that will connect West African countries to deliver natural gas to the international markets. There is a clear line of sight in securing funding for the Nigeria-Morocco gas pipeline project.”
Once fully implemented, the NGEP will transform Nigeria into a gas-enabled economy. This will benefit the country as natural gas is the cleanest fossil fuel and the country has over 202 trillion cubic feet of unproven gas reserves. However, funding remains a challenge as the country’s energy industry is hardly seeing major investments in recent times.
Funding lessons from Saudi Arabia
Although Nigeria as an oil producer is not in the same league as Saudi Arabia in terms of reserves and production output, the Gulf oil producer’s focus on using its oil revenues to boost its renewable energy capacity is a good lesson for Nigeria to learn. Oil Price reports that climate change and wild oil price swings have forced Gulf nations to re-strategize and diversify their economies away from oil, with Saudi Arabia leading the way.
Saudi Arabia has said that it intends to pump every drop of oil it has for the benefit of its economy. At the same time, the Gulf producer has set a target to develop 60 gigawatts (GW) of renewable energy capacity by the end of the decade, which compares with an installed capacity of roughly 80 GW of power plants burning gas or oil.
This way, Saudi Arabia is producing oil and using those funds to build renewable energy capacity. In the same vein, Nigeria can stay focused on tackling political, economic, and security risks to meet its oil production output quota by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (1.8 million barrels per day) and take advantage of rising oil prices ($85.12 at 4:25 am, GMT+1) to fund the NGEP.
What you should know
In 2020, the Nigeria Gas Expansion Program (NGEP) was introduced by the Federal Government, which identified liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), compressed natural gas (CNG), and liquefied natural gas (LNG) as the options for transportation, industrial and domestic use.
During a March 2023 CERAWeek conference in the United States of America, Bala Wunti, the Chief Upstream Investment Officer (CUIO) at the NNPC Upstream Investment Management Services (NUIMS), told attendees that the NPCL is strategically positioned to provide clean, affordable and reliable energy to alleviate energy poverty and guarantee national energy security.
