No investor will invest in Nigeria’s gas now – Operators

The President, Nigerian Gas Association and Managing Director, Frontier Oil Limited, Mr. Dada Thomas, has said that the payment for gas in naira instead of the dollar as contained in gas contracts is currently impacting negatively in investments in the Nigerian gas sector. 
In a statement over the weekend, Dada said the inability of industries and power generation companies to pay for the commodity in dollar, has made it impossible for investors to put money in the sector, saying Nigeria’s operating atmosphere was extremely difficult for gas investments.
“We in Frontier with our partners, Seven Energy and Acugas, have invested in the largest indigenous gas plant in Nigeria and installed gas processing capacity of 200 billion standard cubic feet a day.
“So, I can tell you that it is not easy to invest in gas in Nigeria today. One of the reasons is that gas investments are dollar investments and so we have to go and find a lender to give us dollars; we put that into the business to generate more funds. But guess what, in today’s Nigeria, our revenue is now paid in naira. And when I go looking for the dollar to repay my investors, I cannot get it.
“So there is a problem with paying for gas in naira when the gas contracts were made in dollars. Gas producers are paid in naira at the prevailing Central Bank of Nigeria’s rate at the date you are paid. So, you generate naira at 320 and supposing you are selling your gas at $2, you get N640.
“But if you take N640 to the market to buy dollars, what are you going to get? Of course, you won’t get $2; you may get $1.5 if you are lucky because they are going to sell to you at about N440 to a dollar. Therefore, I cannot meet my loan obligation and that is what we call an investment income currency mismatch.
“That singular fact alone means that nobody is going to invest in gas in Nigeria in the foreseeable future until this issue is resolved”, he said.
Dada’s comment came on the heels of the call by the Group Managing Director of the NIGERIA National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Dr. Maikanti Baru, called for more investments in the gas sector, stressing that there was a need to expand the country’s gas exploration efforts in its sedimentary basins in order to increase the country’s gas reserves.
According to him, Nigeria currently holds the ninth largest gas reserves in the world with 192 trillion cubic feet of gas, but that the resource will be depleted in a couple of years if the country fails to shore up its gas reserves.
Baru urged investors to tap into the $51bn gas investment opportunities in Nigeria, adding that the growth of the Nigerian gas sector was anchored on growing the power and gas based industries.
The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, recently confirmed that the country had paid less attention to the gas sector over the years, but noted that the situation would be adequately addressed if the draft National Gas Policy was approved by the Federal Government.
The minister had said, “Our policy challenge is to develop a policy, the institutional, regulatory and fiscal framework that is attractive to the private sector. Over the years, there has been a total neglect of the gas sector. We really have not focused sufficiently on gas production.
“All of those times, it had been oil production. Having regard to the effect of the recession today, let us develop the twin windows of economic earnings in this country. Let us move to gas.”