Yemisi Izuora/Ijeoma Agudosi
Government is strengthening its gas supply to the power sector to raise electricity generation from the gas powered plants.
The federal government aims to attain at least a five-fold increase in gas fired power generation from about 3,000 mega watts (MW) in 2003 to 15,000MW by 2018.
The Group Managing Director (GMD) of the Nigerian National Petroleum corporation (NNPC) Ibe Kachikwu who dropped the hint in Lagos at the conference of the National Association of Energy Correspondents (NAEC) said, “NNPC is already poised to significantly improving gas utilization to forestall crises.
According to Kachikwu, We have grown from about 700mscfd (Million Standard Cubic Per Day) in 2012 to the current over 1bcfd per day (1.175bcfd) of domestic gas production.
Daily gas volumes of 3.5bcfd can support close to 16GW of electricity.
He also informed that emphasis has therefore been placed on the development of gas such that additional volumes are being pushed to the domestic market.
But he said the efforts are being hampered by inadequate gas pipeline infrastructure to meet current and projected demand growth.
“Lack of connectivity between East and West coupled with limited throughput capacity severely constrained supplies” the GMD said adding that most of the domestic midstream gas treatment facilities often had no provision for full liquids extraction.
Kachikwu further noted that the provision of gas infrastructure will enable increased supply of gas to the domestic economy through gas utilisation in power and other industrial sectors.
This he said will have huge impact on the domestic economy through improved Gross Domestic Product (GDP), import substitution and employment generation.