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FG bemoan rapid drop in oil, gas investments

TIMIPRE Sylva, Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, has lamented the sharp decline in foreign investment in Nigeria’s oil and gas sector.

He also criticized Europe’s haste in rejecting fossil-fuel investment, emphasizing that the Russia-Ukraine conflict has taught the globe a valuable lesson, particularly in the energy sector.

“One of the biggest problems we have in the sector has been investments. In the last 10 years, over $70 billion worth of investments came to Africa. But sadly less than $4 billion came to Nigeria, which is surprisingly the biggest country in Africa. If we cannot attract investments to Nigeria, you know where we are heading,” Sylva told a delegation of the European Union (EU), who paid a visit to his office in Abuja.

Sylva said Nigeria was ready to step in as an alternative gas supplier to Europe during a courtesy call by EU ambassadors led by Samuela Isopi, but encouraged the EU to push its oil and gas businesses such as Shell, Eni, Total Energies, and others to scale up operations in the country.

“One of the things we warned against earlier was the speed at which the EU was taking away investments in fossil fuels. We warned that the speed was faster than they were developing renewable energy. You can see now that what we were warning against is what is happening now,” he said.

The minister warned the team that the lack of new investment was stifling Nigeria’s oil and gas growth, and that a shift in mentality was required if the EU’s requests for increased supplies to Europe were to be met.

“You have been our longtime friend. As of today, our gas reserve is one of the biggest in the world. We have a proven gas reserve of 206 tcf, and if we focus on gas exploitation we can get up to 600 tcf. Nigeria is, arguably, the best territory to invest in. We are already building gas infrastructures such as the Ajaokuta-Kaduna-Kano (AKK) pipeline project, which is expected to take gas to Algeria, and the West Africa Gas Pipeline project designed to take gas to Morocco.”

“As you can see we are already building infrastructure that will take gas to Europe. All we need is investments. We acknowledge that there are challenges in the sector but we should partner to help solve the problems,” Sylva pleaded.

He stated that Europe requires a gas buffer or alternate source, and that Nigeria may assist the continent in achieving this goal.

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