Abdulfattah Olajide
8 February 2008
As part of his panacea to the nation's energy crisis, President Umaru Musa Yar'adua has approved a new National Gas Pricing Policy aimed at ensuring short and long term gas availability at affordable prices, for the domestic and industrial sectors.
Under the new policy, Nigeria's gas will be supplied at the lowest commercially sustainable prices to the strategic domestic sector which provides electricity for residential and light commercial users.
Presidential spokesman, Mr. Olusegun Adeniyi who announced the new policy yesterday said it would make the nation's strategic industrial sector, comprising industries like fertilzer and methanol firms that require gas as their main feedstock, become as competitive as their counterparts in other low-cost gas producing countries.
The new gas policy, according to him, further stipulates that all operators in the country's oil industry must realign their gas development portfolios in order to ensure that gas resources which are rich in natural gas liquids (NGLs), including condensate and LPGs, are directed to strategic domestic sectors.
He said a Department of Gas would be established in the Federal Ministry of Energy to oversee the implementation of the new gas policy and regulations.
He explained that the policy would boost the industrial development in the country by ensuring competitive gas prices for all gas consuming sectors of the economy.
"The policy objective is to ensure that all NGL-rich gas in Nigeria is preferentially deployed for domestic use rather than for export. Under the new policy regime, all oil and gas developers in the country are expected to allocate a specified amount of gas from their reserves and annual production to the domestic market", he said.
He added that "the amount of gas to be reserved for domestic consumption will be periodically determined by the Minister of State (Gas) in the Federal Ministry of Energy."
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2008 Daily Trust. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
