VenturesNow

Nigeria’s $5 billion earnings from gas too low— Vice President Shettima

Published

6 months ago

October 27, 2023

Nigeria’s Vice President, Senator Kashim Shettima, has described as too low the country’s $5 billion earnings from gas, particularly in comparison with similar earnings by other gas-rich African nations like Egypt, Algeria, and Morocco.

Speaking at the 6th Valuechain Annual Lecture and Awards in Abuja, Shettima asserted that Nigeria ranked ninth in the world for proven reserves and had over 200 trillion cubic feet of undeveloped gas resources.

Meanwhile, according to Statista, Nigeria had 5.91 trillion cubic metrics of proven natural gas reserves in 2022. The amount increased slightly compared to the previous year, continuing the upward trend observed over the period under review.

The Vice President went on to say that there was no way to overestimate the importance of fully utilising the country’s gas reserves for power generation, given that gas not only provided 80% of the country’s electricity generation today but was predicted to overtake all other power generation sources by the end of this decade.

The Vice President, represented by Sodiq Wanka, Special Adviser to the President on Energy and Power Infrastructure, stated, “Today, Nigeria earns around $5 billion from gas production, a figure that is 40% less than in Egypt, which has about 30% of Nigeria’s reserves.

“Our production-to-reserve ratio is less than a third of Egypt’s, less than a quarter of Algeria’s and around 10 per cent of Malaysia’s. In the aftermath of the Russia-Ukraine war, the EU and many other nations were shopping for Liquefied Natural Gas at the same time that Nigeria’s largest LNG assets were operating significantly below capacity because gas supply was inadequate.

“At this rate, according to a decade of gas analysis, we could have a demand-supply gap of up to 10bscfd (billion standard cubic feet per day) of gas by 2030.”

Nigeria holds the largest natural gas reserves on the continent, and exports have increased significantly in the past 23 years. As of 2022, some 32.2 billion standard cubic meters of natural gas was exported by the West-African country.

Related Topics:Featured gas Nigeria Nigerian Gas Vice President Kashim Shettima

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VenturesNow

World Bank grants Malawi $57.6 million for food crisis

Published

6 hours ago

April 27, 2024

Ifeoluwa Dada

As a response to its food crisis, the World Bank said on Friday that it would give Malawi $57.6 million in “quick release” grants.

“This support comes in the context of the severe food crisis the country is suffering due to El Niño conditions in the wider southern Africa region,” the World Bank said in a statement.

“A series of intense disaster events over the last few years has left almost no time for the country to recover and has resulted in a severe erosion of food security at the national level.”

Malawi is one of the least developed countries in the world. It is ranked 170 out of 187 countries in the 2010 Human Development Index. Almost 16 million people live there, and 90% of them make less than $2 a day. That’s 53% of the total population.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) says that 46,000 children in Malawi are seriously malnourished. In 2023, UNICEF said that more than 500,000 Malawian children were at risk of not getting enough food.

Now, Malawi has a lot of programs in place to deal with things like poverty, and climate change, and to make the business and agriculture more diverse.

VenturesNow

Nigerian oil regulator implements regional fuel standards

Published

1 day ago

April 26, 2024

Ifeoluwa Dada

Nigeria’s oil authority has clarified that the recent changes to diesel fuel sulphur content standards are part of a regional effort to make things more uniform and are not meant to loosen rules for local refineries.

A report from S&P Global last week said that the West African fuel market had changed a lot after Nigeria raised the maximum diesel sulphur content from 200 parts per million (ppm) to around 650 ppm. This caused worries that the country might be lowering its standards to allow diesel made in Nigeria that is higher than the 200 ppm limit.

The Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA), on the other hand, said it was only following a 2020 decision by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) that all of the regions had to slowly switch to better fuels.

Fuels that have a lot of sulfur can hurt engines and make the air dirty. As of right now, the ECOWAS rule lets locally-made fuel have more sulfur until January 2025. After that, a standard of less than 5 parts per million will be used for all oil, whether it is refined in West Africa or brought in from another country.

Farouk Ahmed, the head of the NMDPRA, told Reuters that the new limits are in line with ECOWAS’s choice to require stricter fuel specifications. The new rules will go into effect in January 2021 for non-ECOWAS imports and January 2025 for ECOWAS refineries.

“We are merely implementing the ECOWAS decision adopted in 2020,” Ahmed said.

“So a local refinery with a 650 ppm sulphur in its product is permissible and safe under the ECOWAS rule until January next year where a uniform standard would apply to both the locally refined and imported products outside West Africa”, Ahmed said.

Ahmed said that importers were told that the amount of sulphur allowed was going down, from 300 parts per million in February to 200 parts per million this month. This was done long before the huge Dangote refinery started providing diesel.

Diesel with a sulphur level of between 1,500 ppm and 3,000 ppm could be brought in by importers before.

The switch to cleaner fuels is in line with efforts to protect the environment around the world and makes sure that all area refiners have the same chances.

Nigeria recently had its worst blackout in decades because of a problem with its energy supply. The high cost of alternative energy sources has been a huge problem for both businesses and individuals, with the price of diesel being the most affordable choice for businesses.