Balancing Nigeria's Home, Export Markets

摘要

Nigeria admits that efforts to distribute the benefits of its enormous oil wealth to its citizens have been an abysmal failure, resulting in civil disorder, worker walkouts and the loss as of last week of 1.7 million barrels per day of oil production. It hopes to avoid duplicating those mistakes as it develops its vast gas resources. One result could be less gas for export. The country has more than 180 trillion cubic feet of proved gas reserves, all found while looking for oil, David Ige, group general manager and senior technical adviser to the group managing director of state Nigerian National Petroleum Corp., said at last week's CWC LNG 2008 conference in San Antonio, Texas. "In 40 years of exploration in Nigeria, we have never explored directly for natural gas," he added.