Nigeria to grow domestic gas consumption by 2019

Nigeria's state run oil company said it had put structures in place to grow the domestic gas consumption from 1.71 billion cubic feet to 5.4 billion per day by 2019. A statement made available to Xinhua on Wednesday quoted the group managing director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) Andrew Yakubu, as saying this at the ongoing Oil and Gas Conference and Exhibition in Abuja. Yakubu told the gathering that the prevailing gas infrastructure component of the Gas Master plan is designed to increase domestic gas consumption three fold to 5.4 bcf per day by 2019. He said the country's reserves stood at 36 billion barrels of oil and about 182 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of gas and produced an average of 2.2 million barrels of oil per day in 2013. "In Africa, only Libya has more oil reserves than Nigeria and despite new discoveries in Sub Saharan Africa, especially in Mozambique, Nigeria still has undiscovered gas potential of about 600 tcf," he said. Yakubu said the discovery of the Ogo field in 2013 with reserves of about 750 million barrels showed that the Nigerian Delta remained one of the most prospective areas in the world. He said the availability of production allowances would also provide a welcome boost for small fields and profitability would increase in the proposed Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) currently before the National Assembly. Nigeria's quest to grow its reserves is promoted in the PIB, he said, adding that this was done through a robust acreage management system to be superintended by the Upstream Petroleum Inspectorate involving the release of acreage that had been held without activity. Six years since it was first proposed, the bill is stuck in the legislative pipeline, with no apparent end in sight. In July 2012, President Goodluck Jonathan sent a fresh version of the bill to parliament that lays out immense changes to the industry and restructures the state oil firm, widely seen as riddled with corruption.