Africa’s richest man and president of the Dangote group, Aliko Dangote, has announced plans to build a 1100-kilometer gas pipeline in a bid to increase the nation’s current consumption on natural gas from one billion cubic feet to three billion cubic feet.
The pipeline will go through the sea, 550 km each for two lines. This is about 1100km from Bonny to Dangote Industries Free Zone, Lekki,Lagos, producing about three billion cubic feet of gas. “At the moment, the entire consumption of Nigeria is one billion cubic feet. So, we are going to triple that all at a stretch,” said Aliko Dangote on a tour of the refinery, fertiliser and petrochemical complex being built in Lagos.
Nigeria, the 9th largest gas reserve in the world and the 22nd biggest producer of natural gas, has been unable to meet the demand for power supply in the country. As such, Dangote looks to explore and utilise the country’s untapped reserve of natural gas, enabling effective energy generation in addition to constant power supply.
Africa’s largest economy depends on natural gas for about 80 percent of its electricity generation, but the country suffers from a gas supply shortfall to its power plants. An increase from one billion cubic feet of gas to three billion cubic feet has the potential to improve Nigeria’s power generation. In October 2015, when Abdulazeez Abdullahi, spokesman of the Kaduna Electricity Distribution Company, was quizzed on the improved power supply in his state, he noted that the improvement in electricity power supply had to do with an increase in the supply of gas to the power generation companies.
The case of an epileptic power supply in Nigeria has been traced to vandalisation of various gas pipelines. Therefore there is a need for the government and other invested authorities to maintain adequate security to safeguard the gas pipelines to ensure stable power supply across the nation.
