OpeOluwani Akintayo
Lagos — West African country, Nigeria’s gas reserves has shut up by over 3 trillion standard cubit feet, TCF or 0.57 per cent from the 202tcf recorded in 2019.
The disclosure was made by the Director, Department of Petroleum Resources, DPR, Auwalu Sarki in a statement over the weekend while announcing that Nigeria’s proven gas deposits have increased to 206.53 trillion standard cubic feet.
According to him, the boost represents a marginal increase of 1.16tcf.
Auwalu said, “Nigeria attained the target of 200tcf of natural gas reserves by the Reserve Declaration as at Jan.1, 2019, before the 2020 target. Thereafter, the government set a target to attain a Reserve Position of 2020tcf by 2030.’’
The federal government had last year, puts Nigeria’s total gas reserves at 203.16 TCF.
This breakthrough comes after the Nigerian government declared 2020 and beyond a decade of gas in a bid to reduce dependence on crude oil.
A breakdown, according to him, says indigenous oil and gas companies contribute as much as 33% to the country’s crude oil reserves and about 30% to its gas reserves.
He further explained that while these companies’ contribution to the reserves was less than 10 million barrels in 2005, it has grown significantly to about 62 million barrels in 2020.
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Chairman of Nigerian Gas Association and Managing Director, Shell Nigeria Gas, Ed Ubong, had earlier been quoted as saying gas only accounts for 5% of Africa energy mix.
He said, “Nigeria is sitting on a large, huge resource base of gas, but how much gas are we producing? We are a top ten country when we talk of what we have but when you talk of what we are actually producing we begin to sit back. We are in the top 20 range.
The gas development in Nigeria has a number of positives, over the last 30 years, we have doubled our domestic gas consumption and moved from about 200 and today in the domestic market we have close to 1.2pcf of gas flowing every day.”
Minister of State for Petroleum, Timipre Sylva said who spoke at the just concluded Nigerian Petroleum Summits, NIPS had also said there was a need for the industry to move beyond lips service on gas development.
He said, “I want to see a holistic roadmap and action plan that provides the appropriate leverage for the way forward in delivering the Decade of Gas vision. The critical milestone that must be achieved should be clearly stated with short, medium and long term strategies.’’
