Nigeria’s gas reserves hit 206.53 trillion standard cubic feet

Chinazor Megbolu

The Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) has said that proven gas deposits in the country has reached 206.53 trillion cubic feet.

In his address at the weekend during the Nigeria International Petroleum Summit, the Director, DPR, Mr. Auwalu Sarki said that indigenous oil and gas firms are now contributing as much as 33 per cent and about 30 per cent of gas to the nation’s crude oil reserves.

He noted that while the firms contribution to the reserves was less than 10 million barrels in 2005, it has grown drastically to about 62 million barrels last year.

Auwalu posited that the growth was as a result of recent efforts being made on gas exploration in the Nigeria, especially the “Decade of Gas Initiative’.

The Nigerian government, had in 2020 put the country’s total gas reserves at 203.16 trillion cubic feet (TCF), which shows a marginal increase of 1.16tcf or 0.57 per cent from the 202tcf recorded in 2019.

Auwalu added that the recent increase indicated a growth of over 3 trillion.
“Nigeria attained the target of 200tcf of natural gas reserves by the Reserve Declaration as at January 1, 2019, before the 2020 target.

“Thereafter, government set a target to attain a Reserve Position of 2020tcf by 2030,” Auwalu said.

He pointed out that independent organisations are driving value addition to gas, saying that acquisition of divested assets as well as accelerated appraisal and development efforts are other driving factors.

According to him; “the country is already gaining from the deliberate national efforts to boost indigenous participation in the sector”.

Meanwhile, the Chairman, Nigeria Gas Association (NGA) and Managing Director, Shell Nigeria Gas (SNG), Mr. Ed Ubong, said: “Nigeria is sitting on a large, huge resource base of gas, but how much gas are we producing?

“We are a top ten country when we talk of what we have but when you talk of what we are actually producing we begin to sit back, we are in the top 20 range.

“The gas development in Nigeria has a number of positives, over the last 30 years, we have doubled our domestic gas consumption and moved from about 200 and today in the domestic market we have close to 1.2pcf of gas flowing every day, he stated.

The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Timipre Sylva had said there was need for the industry to move beyond ‘lips service’ on gas development.

He said: “I want to see a holistic roadmap and action plan that provides the appropriate leverage for the way forward in delivering the Decade of Gas vision.

“The critical milestone that must be achieved should be clearly stated with short, medium and long term strategies”.