By Ediri Ejoh, at GASTECH, Milan Italy

Operators and stakeholders have yesterday identified the need to explore more  innovative solutions, especially as producers experience new long term contracts. 

This came as the Minister for State, Petroleum, Timipre Sylva, said Nigeria was opened for more investment from the international community as enabling laws and policies have been put in place to grow their investment.

According to the operators, the LNG market, though threatened by volatility in the short term, has witnessed increased investments across the board. 

Vice President, Gas and LNG Research for Wood Mackenzie, Massimo Di Odoardo said, “”We see demand falling in our outlook, however uncertainty does remain, as extremely cold weather this winter or reduced Russian flows could put Europe on a different trajectory. 

“Should Nord Stream flows not resume following September maintenance, European inventories might still end up at 26 percent by the end of this winter, although they might only be able to get to 81 percent ahead of next winter.”

” The biggest risk, though, will be the weather and If the northern hemisphere has an extremely cold winter, increasing need for heating across Europe and Asia could add up to 30 billion m3 to winter demand and risk reducing European storage inventories down to 4% by March and up to only 63% ahead of the start of following winter, inevitable resulting in demand curtailments.

Also speaking, Deputy chief operating officer for natural resources, Eni, Cristian Signoretto, said, ” It plans to invest around 4.5 billion euros ($4.47 billion) in upstream activities each year from now to 2025 focusing on several countries.

“We are fully committed to invest 4.5 billion per annum in the upstream to bring on line new gas supplies.”

Speaking during a panel session on ‘Bridging the project funding gap in a time of geopolitical uncertainty’, Group Executive Director, Gas and Power, Mohammed Ahmed, noted that investment has been consistent in Nigeria, as expansion in a phase ongoing.

According to him, there is need to consciously  look at financing upstream investment which is key. 

 “Someone has to do it. Several efforts have been put in place to enhance investment. The transitioning of the NNPC is expected to aid investment.”

 He, however noted that the country remains challenged by infrastructure to deepen gas utilisation.    

 “Feed gas into many gas plants being built cannot happen without the upstream segment. We need to depart from main export to domestic consumption. Also, gas-based industries need to mature to aid off taking. There is a large potential in domestic market consumption but needs investment. Identified projects need funding. We seek investment in the sector. There’s a level playing ground with the liberalisation in the upstream through the PIA for investors.”

IOCs fingered lobbying against decarbonization 

Meanwhile,  International Oil Companies, IOC, have been warned to step down its pursuit to influence the government against decarbonization as well as slowing the energy transition plans to renewables. 

This was the view of Christiana Figueres, Former Secretary General of the United Nations Framework Convention of Climate Change, UNFCCC while speaking on Achieving Radical Collaboration on Climate Objectives 

According to her, the Russian/ Ukrain crisis has exposed the effect of fossil fuel dependence. “Come 2050 gas is not going to be a major source of energy. There is a need for that thought to understand that it was a major source, yes it has to be now because of Russia’s invasion, but it has to go. 

“There has been lobbying of government against climate change policies and regulations. Stop lobbying the government to betray its number one responsibility to its citizens. Don’t disingenuously…complain of lack of government policies when you are increasingly lobbying budget for fossil fuel-friendly policies as irresponsible profiteering at the expense of humanity must stop.

“Overall, I am deeply disappointed. I hear a lot of the conversations about decarbonization, but I don’t see the decisiveness and actions to that effect. 

“What I see is the age of problem of shifting capital around and maintaining another type of ambiguous toxic status quo instead of aggressively leveraging the cash base to take up more calibrated risked and accelerated investment into new asset process and services.

“The fossil fuel era is approaching its expiration day, as the IEA is unequivocally stating that there is no more room for new fossil fuel exploration and that thus includes Natural gas. 

“It would soon be horrifying evident that the current high energy crisis has provided historically high profits for their vast industry and at the same time turning abject poverty into unfathomable misery among the most vulnerable operations of the world. This, however, has turned more into poverty for the first time.

“There is a need for the oil companies to leverage their current profitability to contribute to the solution of de-carbonization. Despite current high prices business continuity of this industry depends on a clear and decisive shift in the business model.

“Africa has become the ideological battleground in the energy transition and there is an urgent need for oil companies to be conscious of its business continuity and environment.”