The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylva, has said that Nigeria is yet to harness the full benefit of gas and, therefore, could not switch to renewable fuel yet.
He disclosed this to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja, while speaking on the plethora of benefits of using gas and in extension, its impact on the country’s economy.
Sylva noted that Nigeria had “a lot of gas” and that it had “206 trillion cubic feet of gas reserves”, and was only discovered “while looking for oil”, describing it as an accidental discovery.
He said, “We were actually going to look for crude oil and we found gas, and in that process of accidentally finding gas, we have found up to 206 tcf.
“So, the belief is that if we really aim to look for gas dedicatedly, we will find up to 600 trillion cubic meters of gas.”
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Renewable Fuel
Speaking on the transition from gas to renewable fuels, the minister said that Nigeria was yet to use gas to its fullest and that transitioning was only beneficial to western nations because they had used coal and crude oil to generate enough electricity for their citizens.
Bringing the situation home, he said that lots of Nigerians still lacked access to electricity, and that, in the meantime, gas would be used to generate electricity before the conversation of transition can be fully visited.
Although, he expressed the desire of the incumbent government to embrace the transition to renewable fuels but said that gas could not be abandoned just yet.
Sylva said, “We are also transiting and that is why we are talking about gas. We are seeing gas as a bridge to renewable fuels.
“We came from coal which is solid, to crude oil; now we are moving to gaseous gas and then to renewables.
“The belief in the industry is that if we have this kind of vast resource and we have not tapped it, why should we abandon it and move to renewables.
“We have not used gas to drive our cars and few people use it to cook; we have not used gas to generate electricity or used it to fire our fertiliser blending plants, then why should we abandon it and move to renewables?
“What we are saying is that the western countries are in a position to move to renewables after using coal and crude oil to stabilise the electricity in their areas and everybody there enjoys it.
“But we have a situation in Nigeria where a lot of people do not have access to electricity yet.
“So, what we are saying is that we agree to transit but let us use our gas first to develop our country and get the benefits of development, that point where everybody has electricity, then we can transit to renewable fuel.”
