By Bisola Adeyemo
President Muhammadu Buhari on Tuesday, revealed plans on various initiatives to enhance the performance of Nigeria’s oil and gas sector.
Speaking at the 6th Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF) summit in Doha, Qatar, the president spoke through irs representative, Timipre Sylva, minister of state for petroleum resources, that there would be more investment and focus on natural gas exploration to achieve accelerated growth in the industry.
President Buhari said, a gas province with some oil, is committed to the sustainable growth of natural gas exploitation and utilization, both for domestic use and export via LNG and pipeline gas to sub-regional African countries.
“NGEP is designed to provide framework and policy support to extend the gas supply and utilisation in power generation, gas-based industries and in emerging niche gas sectors.
“Such is gas in transportation, Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) for cooking and remote virtual gas supply using trucks to convey LNG and Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) to industries,” the president said.
Other initiatives; are the Ajaokuta-Abuja-Kano gas pipeline, which aims to support five billion cubic feet per day of domestic gas utilization and five-gigawatt power generation in the near term.
“The expanding of the current LNG production capacity to about 30 million tons per annum at Bonny with the ongoing N-LNG Train seven project and the declaration of 2021-2030 as the Decade of Gas towards a gas-powered economy.
“This would not only lower Nigeria’s Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions but also reduce the country’s import bills,” he said.
For a better achievement, Buhari called for a team work to make modern energy sources such as natural gas available and affordable to all.
“There is need to work together as policy makers, investors, the energy industry decision makers, researchers, and technology developers to make modern energy sources such as natural gas available and affordable to all,” the president said.
