Rejects uniform pathway to net-zero emissions
–Launches 2026 licensing round next month
By Obas Esiedesa, Bangkok
Nigeria plans to double or triple its natural gas production to meet up to 70 per cent of Africa’s gas demand, leveraging its estimated 215 trillion cubic feet (TCF) reserves to tackle energy poverty across the continent, the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC), has said.
The Commission’s Chief Executive, Mrs. Oritsemeyiwa Eyesan, disclosed this on Tuesday during a panel session at the 2026 Gastech conference in Bangkok, Thailand, where she said Nigeria was positioning gas as a critical fuel for its domestic energy needs, exports and financing of the country’s energy transition.
Eyesan said Nigeria currently produces about eight BCF of gas daily describing the volume as a fraction of the country’s enormous resource base.
She said: “Nigeria is sitting today on 215 TCF of gas. Our current gas production is about 8 BCF. I’m sure if you just do an extrapolation, you can see that that is still a very minute resource coming out of oil and gas production.”
According to her, increasing production significantly would not only enable Nigeria to satisfy its domestic requirements but also allow the country to become a major supplier to the rest of Africa.
“By doubling our production, tripling our production, we can be meeting at least 70 per cent of Africa’s demand,” she stated.
Eyesan, however, identified investment, gas pricing and infrastructure as critical factors that must be addressed to unlock the potential.
She explained that the Federal Government had introduced several incentives to attract investors into the sector, while the NUPRC had continued to take Nigerian assets to the market through regular licensing rounds.
She disclosed that the Commission would launch its 2026 licensing round next month, following previous rounds conducted in 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025.
According to her, the latest round attracted significant investor interest, with 37 out of the 50 assets offered taken up.
“Today, we are trying to attract investments into the gas space,” she said, adding that the Commission was also working to address challenges around domestic gas pricing to ensure a commercially viable market for producers and consumers.
Eyesan said improved infrastructure was another major development, noting that increased government investment in recent years was beginning to unlock gas infrastructure across Nigeria.
She argued that extending the country’s gas infrastructure to other West African countries could help tackle energy poverty and facilitate a shift from biomass and other high-polluting fuels to lower-carbon energy sources.
“Gas definitely is a transition, not just for Nigeria, but for Africa, for the continent at large,” she said.
The NUPRC chief also rejected calls for a uniform pathway to net-zero emissions for African countries, arguing that differences in resource endowment and economic circumstances made a single approach impractical.
She said resource-rich countries such as Nigeria should be allowed to leverage their competitive advantages while working with countries that possess other resources and technologies.
“It cannot be one size fits all,” Eyesan said.
She further noted that the global energy transition had initially resulted in reduced investment in hydrocarbons, but that the realities of rising energy demand had changed the investment outlook.
According to her, hydrocarbons would remain relevant for years to come, making regulatory certainty and attractive fiscal terms crucial to bringing fresh capital into Nigeria’s oil and gas sector.
Eyesan said the Petroleum Industry Act, PIA, enacted in 2021 had significantly changed Nigeria’s regulatory environment, with the NUPRC becoming more responsive to investors through improved permitting systems and defined service-level commitments.
“For the regulator as well, the one way to assure investment is responsiveness to your customers,” she said.
She added that Nigeria’s regular licensing rounds, improved regulatory predictability and its vast hydrocarbon resources were helping to rebuild investor confidence.
Gas critical to U.S. energy transition — Kalnin
Also speaking, Chief Executive Officer of BKV Corporation, Mr. Chris Kalnin, said natural gas had played a critical role in reducing carbon emissions from the United States electricity grid.
He explained that gas-fired power plants could rapidly adjust their output to balance fluctuations from renewable energy sources, making gas an important complement to solar and wind power.
According to him, the energy transition in the United States has slowed in some respects because capital has become more selective, but viable technologies, including carbon capture, continue to attract investment.
On his part, Chairman of Pakistan Gasport, Mr. Iqbal Ahmed, warned that excessive LNG prices could ultimately undermine demand for the fuel and push some consumers back to coal and fuel oil.
He argued that fossil fuels would remain relevant for the foreseeable future, saying the more realistic objective should be to improve the efficiency of their use and reduce their carbon footprint rather than expect their complete disappearance.
President of the National Petroleum Authority of Timor-Leste, Mr. Gualdino da Silva, meanwhile, said developing countries needed to balance decarbonisation objectives with their national development priorities, particularly where oil and gas remained the main source of economic growth.
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