Nigeria plans to expand gas output to 40 million metric tons in 30 years

Nigeria’s transition to cleaner energy gets a little closer as investors in the country’s gas industry have been given an approval to go ahead with a 12-train liquefaction expansion plan by the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) for the next three decades. This is expected to effectively drivecapacity output nearly five-fold from current 222 million tons per annum (mtpa) to 40 million mtpa in 30 years.

“The transition to cleaner energy is going to happen faster than you think. As we reconstruct our refineries, we are going to be looking at how to make them more green friendly, but every indicator of our studies shows that the fastest move we are going to make to green energy is on gas,” Ibe Kachikwu, Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, said in southern Rivers state.

According to Kachikwu, the enhanced capacity at the liquefaction company will translate to larger volumes of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) supply in the domestic market to meet commercial and household fuel demand in line with the company’s vision to help build a better Nigeria.

“Although your market today is focussed on externalisation, you will soon see government policies drive you towards internalisation very rapidly. So you need to grow those volumes for the teeming population we have. I challenge you to look at this and grow from the 30 MTPA you are talking of now to about 40 mpta  over the next 30 years,” he added.

Kachikwu, who led a delegation of regulators and ministry of officials to the company’s said government would support rapid expansion of the company’s processing capacity.