Nigeria faces a paradoxical situation where gas, intended to mitigate power shortages, is instead being wasted through flaring, leaving numerous households without electricity.
BusinessDay reports that Nigeria squandered natural gas valued at $205.7 million in the first two months of 2024, enough to power four million households.
Data from the Nigerian gas flare tracker of the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA) revealed that approximately 58.8 million standard cubic feet (Mscf) of gas was flared during this period, with a potential power generation capacity of 4.04 thousand megawatts (MW).
PricewaterhouseCoopers noted in a report titled “Privatisation in the power sector: Navigating the Transition” that an industrial nation typically requires about 1MW for every thousand population. However, Nigeria’s installed generating capacity of 13,014.14MW, with an operating capacity of around 4,000MW, underscores the significant challenge in meeting the country’s electricity demands.
Despite being Africa’s largest oil producer, Nigeria grapples with persistent energy challenges, exacerbated by recent blackouts, including a collapse of the electricity grid last Thursday. This outage plunged vast regions of the country into darkness, disrupting daily life and worsening living conditions for many Nigerians.
The unreliability of the power infrastructure has affected households, businesses, and essential services nationwide. Distribution companies reported widespread feeder outages, plunging their franchise areas across all 36 states into darkness.
Experts stress the urgent need for gas commercialisation, proper regulation, and the development of floating liquefied natural gas (FLNG) to address Nigeria’s energy woes. Preye David Orodu, a lead engineer at KEOT Synergy, underscores the importance of promoting gas commercialisation to attract investment and reduce reliance on imports.
Orodu advocates investment in modular processing facilities to capture flared gas at well sites, creating profitable clusters to enhance the gas value chain. Meanwhile, energy analyst Kelvin Emmanuel emphasizes the necessity of deregulating gas prices to incentivise operators to commercialise flared gas and mitigate environmental degradation and economic losses.
Emmanuel suggests the development of Floating LNG vessels as a viable solution to reduce infrastructure costs and facilitate the off-take of associated gas from well-heads, ultimately improving Nigeria’s energy sector efficiency and sustainability.
