THE competition against Nigeria’s oil and gas has become stiffer with the discovery of the mineral resources in countries that used to depend on crude oil imports from Nigeria.
The discovery of crude oil in the United States (U.S) was the first major set back for the country oil and gas sector.
Nigeria was the U.S highest exporter of the essential product, but had to reduce its import from Nigeria due to its crude oil and shale gas discovery.
For instance, the U.S bought just about 361,000 barrels of Nigeria’s crude oil in July last year, as the U.S leans more and more on internal supplies and enjoys the impact of unconventional energy.
The U.S. Energy Information Agency showed 361,000 barrels of Nigerian crude oil was shipped to the U.S. market in the same period, down from the 810,000 barrels from the previous year.
Already, Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) had acknowledged that rising domestic oil production in the U.S would gradually diminish Nigeria and other member countries’ export to America.
OPEC, in its yearly world oil outlook released recently, believed this would result in a sharp cut in purchases from African and Middle-Eastern oil producers - most of them OPEC members.
U.S purchases of Nigerian crude oil fell to a five-year low in the last few months, pushing Nigeria, a major OPEC member, to sixth position from fifth among suppliers to the world’s largest oil consumer.
Also, the government of India, said it was working on an ambitious plan to cut the country’s oil imports by half in the next seven years, a move that can reduce country’s crude oil import from Nigeria. India is also one of Nigeria crude oil importer.
The country’s Petroleum Minister, Veerapa Moily, said recently that the government was already working on a detailed road map to achieve the target in a way that the import dependence is reduced by 50 per cent by 2020, 75 per cent by 2025 and 100 per cent by 2030.
“I very strongly feel that this can be achieved with commitment, resolve and readiness for decision-making,” the minister said much to the delight of policymakers.
He said that in the coming years, India would increase its dependence on natural gas. “We will try and increase its current share of around 9 per cent in our primary energy basket towards the current global average of 23 per cent,” he said. He said huge finds of natural gas in Australia, Qatar, Mozambique, Nigeria and Tanzania offer a credible alternative as an environment-friendly and possibly cheaper fossil fuel.
Apart from the discovery of crude oil in the country’s major oil importers, industry operator feared that recent gas discoveries in other parts of Africa, may negatively affect Nigeria’s crude oil potential and its competitiveness.
“The competitiveness of Nigeria’s crude oil and the numerous opportunities to monetise it would be impacted by recent discoveries of large reserves of gas in other parts of Africa, especially offshore East Africa, as well as, huge exploitations of shale gas in different parts of the world,” an industry source, has said.
Already, Angola is now Africa’s third largest oil producer behind Nigeria and Libya and, in January 2007, became the 12th member of OPEC.
According to the 2012 BP Statistics Energy Survey, Angola had proved oil reserves of 13. 5 billion barrels at the end of 2011, equivalent to 21.1 years of current production and 0.81 per cent of the world’s thousand barrels of crude oil per day in 2011.
The country is already exporting more than 90 per cent of its crude oil to China and the U.S, which were some of Nigeria’s major crude oil importers.
Speaking in the same vein, Diezani Allison-Madueke, minister of Petroleum Resources, declared that Nigeria is coming under extreme competitive pressure from its African neighbours.
According to Allison Madueke, Nigeria’s reporting of new giant oil and gas discovery by Nigeria’s African neighbours and the discovery of shale gas globally is a major challenge to the Nigeria’s oil and gas industry.
She further disclosed that lack of commercial discovery of oil in the Chad basin is becoming a cause of concern for the sector.
She, however, allayed fears that the non-discovery of oil in commercial quantity will affect the country negatively in the long run, saying, “the lack of activity in the Chad basin is not a signal of lack of prospectivity.”
The Group Managing Director of Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Mr. Andrew Yakubu confirmed recently that the discovery of shale gas in the U.S coupled with other economic reasons led to the decline in the demand for Nigeria’s crude oil from that country.
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