Vice President, Senator Kashim Shettima has decried that Nigeria’s $5 billion gas earnings were insufficient compared to the Nation’s reserve.
Shettima disclosed this Thursday in his remarks at the 6th Valuechain Annual Lecture and Awards in Abuja.
The Vice President was represented by his Special Adviser on Energy and Power Infrastructure, Sodiq Wanka, who said that Nigeria has over 200 trillion cubic feet of untapped gas resources and ranks 9th globally regarding proven reserves.
He said the impact of truly exploiting the Nation’s gas reserves could not be overstated as gas was critical to the Nation’s power supply, not only accounting for 80 per cent of power generation, but expected to be the dominant power generation source by the end of this decade.
“Today, Nigeria earns around $5bn from gas production, 40 per cent less than in Egypt, which has around 30 per cent of Nigeria’s reserves.
“Our production-to-reserve ratio is less than a third of Egypt’s, less than a quarter of Algeria’s and around 10 per cent of Malaysia’s. In the aftermath of the Russia-Ukraine war, the EU and many other nations were shopping for Liquefied Natural Gas.
“Nigeria’s largest Liquified Natural Gas, LNG, assets were operating significantly below capacity because of inadequate gas supply.
“At this rate, according to a decade of gas analysis, we could have a demand-supply gap of up to 10bscfd (billion standard cubic feet per day) of gas by 2030,” he said.
