Peter Uzoho
As the federal government champions Nigeria’s energy transition plan with more focus on gas production and utilisation, the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Brittania-U Nigeria Limited, Mrs Uju Ifejika, has urged the government to provide some funding support for indigenous oil firms.
Ifejika said such funding support which may be in form of single digit loans would enable the indigenous oil companies to take up big gas projects and accelerate production for both domestic use and export.
Admitting that Nigeria is more of a gas nation than an oil nation, she argued that there is dearth of gas gathering infrastructure that would encourage the indigenous firms to be more active in gas production.
Ifejika said Nigerian indigenous oil firms are all waiting for government to provide some support and assurances before they could embark on major gas projects, noting that gas projects are higher in terms of capital than oil projects.
“I want to talk about transition to gas. Yes, Nigeria is a gas nation, not an oil nation. We just have to move to that because it’s cheaper. What I want the government to look at is, because it’s easier for you to say we want to transit to gas. Do we have gas gathering infrastructure in this country enough to say everybody should move their gas to that particular facility?”, Ifejika said, in her intervention at a recent forum.
She maintained: “We don’t even have enough gas for that. So, for us to do that, we want to know what the government’s position is. You cannot be asking the indigenous companies to produce gas and move away from the oil which the IOCs have been in since the inception of this our oil discovery.
“If the government can fund the creative industry and these other industries: agric, why are there not single digit interest loans for the oil and gas indigenous companies? Because you cannot tell somebody to just go into gas without funding support.
“The cost of doing gas is almost five times than that of oil and that’s why the IOCs didn’t focus on producing gas. If you are a gas nation and it took us this long, it means that something is wrong. What is the government doing about putting infrastructure in locations where this gas could be gathered?”
