Growing gas demand drives push to exploit Nigeria’s inland basins

With domestic gas demand expected to further increase, as more power plants are set to come on stream to bridge power supply deficits, Nigeria needs to look beyond the Gas Master Plan and explore its inland basins to meet its gas needs, industry experts have said.

The Nigerian Gas Master Plan (NGMP) which was approved in February 2008, was designed to optimise the vast gas resources in the country, but almost six years after, not much of the desired result has been achieved.

According to the experts, Nigeria boasts of huge gas resources in the inland basins, which are yet to be exploited. The inland basins comprise the Anambra basin, the lower, middle, and upper Benue trough, the southeastern sector of the Chad basin, the Mid-Niger (Bida) basin, and the Sokoto basin.

“We have multiple inland basins that have

huge potential for gas,” said Layi Fatona, managing director, Niger Delta Petroleum Company.

Wumi Iledare, president of the International Association for Energy Economics (IAEE) told BusinessDay that there is need for the government to do complete geological and geophysical surveys of all of those inland basins and come up with what they actually contain. They can then sell the geological information and data to indigenous or international companies that will be interested in doing prospecting there, or they can contract the exploration service to companies.

“I think they have given prospecting licences on some of those basins, as we have seen some international companies go to the Chad basin to explore. They have done a lot of exploration in the Bauchi basin, Sokoto basin, Benue trough and Anambra basin,” Iledare said.

“If you look at the tremendous gas resources that we have, we need a fiscal system to drive investment towards the resources. Up till now, we have no fiscal system driving gas investment and that is one of the reasons why we need to pass the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB),” he added.

“The Gas Master Plan is a good thing and we should ensure that it succeeds. But success with it will not solve our need for gas to power,” Chinedu Nebo, minister of power, said last Thursday, at the annual conference of the National Association of Energy Correspondents (NAEC).

“We need to encourage investors to exploit the gas resources that are available in our inland basins”, said Nebo, who was represented by Frank Edozie, his special adviser on gas. “This will help to supply gas to power plants and industrial hubs in the country,” he added.

The Gas Master Plan requires tremendous investment to execute it and there is no way government can single-handedly convert gas to monetary end products, said Iledare, adding “And that is why government must create that enabling environment and put in place proper incentives that will divert investors towards gas development.”

The NNPC had recently kicked-off fresh exploration campaigns in offshore, onshore and the inland basins of Chad, Benue, Bida, Sokoto and Anambra, to increase the country’s crude oil reserve and production, Andrew Yakubu, former group managing director of the corporation had said, adding that over 1,000 square kilometres of seismic data have been acquired in the Chad Basin, despite the security situation in Borno State.

Businessday