BY SEBASTINE OBASI, Houston Texas

For Nigeria to achieve rapid development, the gas master plan must be effectively implemented, says Mr. Emeka Okwuosa, Chief Executive Officer, CEO, Oilserv Limited, an indigenous oil and gas servicing company.

Okwuosa, who spoke to journalists at the Offshore Technology Conference, OTC, in Houston, Texas, stated that the Gas Master Plan should be executed faster as Nigeria has the capacity to utilise five billion standard cubic feet, SCF, daily.

According to him, “Today, gas is the key resource that drives capacity building in terms of the economy in Nigeria. If Nigeria can articulate and be in position and seriously go on to implement the gas master plan and take it beyond the original ideas, make gas available all over Nigeria, you can see that with energy available, it is possible to have things like power generation get easy.

“If we have power generation in a way that from generation to distribution, we are able to get it right in Nigeria, the country will change rapidly,” he said.

Okwuosa explained that gas is related to our ability to feed ourselves, as it is the main source of the production of urea, the main component of fertiliser. “The fertiliser you apply in order to have good yield in agriculture, comes from gas. Unfortunately the only fertiliser company we have is NAFCON, built about 30 years ago, which has been privatised. How come a country that has so much resource has only one fertiliser plant?

“Today, some quantity of fertiliser out of the total need is still being imported into the country. Meanwhile we sell our gas as LNG. Countries that buy that, produce fertiliser and come back to sell to us,” he said.
The Oilserv boss also emphasised that for Nigeria to develop, it needs to be self-sufficient in energy production.

“The energy source today is gas. If we cannot articulate clearly the commercial framework, the technical framework to be able to take issues and close the entire value chain, to give gas to Nigerians, at a price you can call equitable, it means clearly that we cannot move forward to develop our country.

“Most of the power plants run on gas. Industries run on gas. We need to implement the gas master plan very well, implement the process whereby we match pricing, match the commercial aspect of it to give gas to Nigerians,” he added.

Also speaking on gas flaring, Okwuosa said that gas requires matching the production to utilisation. That means there has to be a defined price regime to encourage the owners of gas to be able to produce it, transport it and use it.

“For IOCs who own most of the gaseous products, they must have the right price regime. It means they must have the right price to invest,” he said.