Minister of State for Petroleum Resources disclosed this when he received a delegation led by Samuela Isopi, EU’s ambassador to Nigeria and ECOWAS.
Sylva urged the European Union (EU) to increase investments in gas and hydrocarbons in Nigeria to be able to meet the bloc’s energy needs.
The minister’s call comes on the heels of the festering war between Ukraine and Russia, which threatens gas supply to European countries.
Russia currently supplies about 30 to 40 percent of the EU’s gas needs.
Senior adviser on media and communications to the minister, Horatius Egua in a statement issued on Saturday by , quoted Sylva urging the EU to encourage its oil and gas companies such as Shell, Eni, and Total Energies to scale up investments in the Nigerian gas sector.
“One of the things we warned against earlier was the speed with which the EU was taking away investments in fossil fuels,” he was quoted as saying.
“We warned that the speed was faster than they were developing renewable energy. You can see now that what we were warning against is what is happening now.”
He told the delegation that what stunted growth in the development of gas in Nigeria was fresh investments, and called for a change of attitude on the part of the EU if its requests to increase supplies to Europe would be realised.
According to the minister, one of the biggest challenges the sector faces is lack of investments.
“In the last 10 years, over 70 billion dollars worth of investments came to Africa, but sadly less than four billion dollars came to Nigeria,” Sylva said.
“Surprisingly, we are the biggest in Africa. If we cannot attract investments to Nigeria, you know where we are heading.
“You have been our long time friend. As at today, our gas reserve is one of the biggest in the world. We have a proven gas reserve of 206 tcf and if we really focus on gas exploitation we can get up to 600 tcf.
“We are already building gas infrastructure such as the Ajaokuta-Kaduna-Kano (AKK) pipeline project, expected to take gas to Algeria, and the West Africa Gas Pipeline project designed to take gas to Morroco.”
The minister said that due to the Russia-Ukraine war, the EU must have a buffer or an alternative source of gas.
