Sylva: Buhari has political will to transform Nigeria into gas nation

Timipre Sylva, minister of state for petroleum resources, says President Muhammadu Buhari has the political will to make Nigeria a gas nation.

Sylva said this on Monday during the pre-summit conference of the 2021 Nigeria international petroleum summit, tagged ‘The Decade of Gas,’ in Abuja.

He said the Buhari-led administration would ensure that Nigeria’s vast natural gas deposit is leverage to encourage industrialisation.

“I can assure you that President Muhammadu Buhari has the political will to surmount the challenges to continue on the pursuit to transform Nigeria as a gas nation,” he said.

“It is no longer acceptable that despite the country’s vast natural gas resources, the gap between electricity supply and demand is huge; access unreliable, and cost expensive.

“We must deal with energy poverty in this country. We must find a way to unlock the natural gas potential of this nation and drag over 120 million of our people out of energy poverty.”

Sylva further said at the end of the summit, a robust road map would be presented to Buhari in a bid to “continue in our determined pursuit of transforming Nigeria into a gas-based industrial nation”.

In his remarks, Mele Kyari, group managing director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporations (NNPC), said the pre-summit conference is coming at the most crucial time as the world transits to cleaner energy.

Kyari also said that Nigeria, under the leadership of Buhari, had committed huge resources to ensure that domestic gas infrastructure reach every corner of the country and to deepen natural gas utilisation.

He explained that this would spur investment in power and gas-based industries, grow the economy and generate employment for millions of young people.

“All this is at the backdrop of the fact we are a gas nation with over 203 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of proven gas reserves and potentially over 600tcf,” he said.

“Our effort at monetising the huge gas resources has been modest but clearly spurred to higher level by numerous policy and industry interventions since 2016 culminating in the declaration of year 2020 as year of gas and now progressing with the decade of gas from year 2021.”

Earlier at the conference, Buhari said gas has the potential to diversify Nigeria’s economy, adding that the ‘decade of gas’ will set the tone for the development of the industry in the next 10 years.