By Yemi Olakitan
The chancellor of Germany, Olaf Scholz has stated that his nation is interested in making natural gas investments in Nigeria.
He made this statement when he visited President Bola Ahmed Tinubu on October 29.
Scholz claims that Germany is considering making investments in Nigeria’s natural gas industry in addition to essential minerals. But certain things, like gas prices, will have to be implemented.
“It is then up to German companies to conduct their private business, if we succeed and if there is a better chance of exporting the produced gas.” This would also affect the price of gas globally; if more states offered gas on the international market, prices would go down. Utilizing available capacity and expanding global production diversification are crucial.
Scholz was informed by President Tinubu that Nigeria is prepared to support gas pipeline developments.
Recall that Tinubu had declared he was prepared to remove all obstacles to ease investments in Nigeria during the September 2023 G-20 conference in India, addressing both current and prospective investors.
It is also noteworthy that the European Union is keeping an eye out for gas imports into its member states.
In the close to medium term, the European Union has reaffirmed its commitment to increasing the amount of LNG that it imports from Nigeria.
During a recent visit to the NLNG Bonny Plant in Rivers State, EU Commissioner for Energy in Nigeria, Kadri Samson, made this announcement.
While inspecting the facility, she reaffirmed the EU’s commitment to purchasing more LNG from Nigeria and commended Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas Limited for its position as a significant LNG supplier on the continent.
She underlined that while the EU is moving quickly to transition to a more energy-efficient economy, in the near term it still has to fortify its ties with reliable LNG partners like Nigeria.
“This will assist them in filling some of the gap created by former Russian imports while they steadily shift away from fossil fuels.”
Samson claims that Nigeria has proven to be a trustworthy partner. Nigeria exported 9.4 billion cubic meters (bcm) of LNG to the EU in 2022.
She did point out that there is a chance to achieve more in the years leading up to 2027.
The United States of America is the leading supplier of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Europe, followed by Qatar, Russia, and Nigeria, according to the International Gas Union’s (IGU) October 2023 Global Gas Report.