Nigeria Seeks Massive Investment in Gas Sector

State owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) is seeking massive investment in country’s natural gas sector.

According to a report published earlier this month in The Guardian Nigeria, Ohi Alegbe, the Group General Manager, Group Public Affairs, NNPC said in a statement that the measure was aimed at ameliorating the effect of drop in crude oil prices on the Nigerian economy.

Group Managing Director, NNPC, Joseph Dawha, had stated this earlier at a panel session at the Offshore Technology Conference (OTC) in Houston, Texas, USA.

"The Nigerian gas sector has seen tremendous focus in the last few years. We have grown capacity at a pace of 18-20 percent with supply now at about two billion cubic feet of gas per day in the domestic market from a humble start of about 300 million cubic feet per day a few years ago," Dawha said at the event.

He noted that in spite of the annual investment of millions of dollars in the last four years in gas supply and infrastructure, there was need for significant addition to infrastructure and supply development.

"For example, we have built over 500km gas pipelines and we are building an additional 120km currently; but we need to build many more kilometers of pipelines to connect new markets and gas sources. We need investments in gas processing, micro-Liquified Natural Gas, Compressed Natural Gas as well as upstream Non-Associated Gas (NAG) development. Therein lie the compelling investment opportunities," he said, reported The Guardian Nigeria.

"We can turn the gloom inherent in low price into a breakthrough for gas based industrialisation of Nigeria," Dawha stated.