Nigeria is moving to significantly ramp up natural gas production, with regulators saying the country could supply up to 70 per cent of Africa’s gas demand by tapping deeper into its estimated 215 trillion cubic feet in reserves.
The Chief Executive of the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC), Oritsemeyiwa Eyesan, made the disclosure at the 2026 Gastech conference in Bangkok, Thailand, where she framed gas as central to Nigeria’s domestic energy supply, export ambitions, and transition financing.
According to Eyesan, Nigeria currently produces about 8 billion cubic feet of gas daily — a figure she described as marginal compared to the country’s total resource base. She said doubling or tripling that output would position Nigeria to meet a substantial share of the continent’s gas needs, tackling energy poverty across West Africa and beyond in the process.
Eyesan noted that scaling up would depend on fresh investment, commercially viable domestic gas pricing, and expanded infrastructure. She pointed to federal incentives already in place to draw investors, alongside NUPRC’s ongoing licensing rounds — the most recent of which saw 37 of 50 available assets taken up. A new licensing round is expected to launch next month, continuing a cycle that has run annually since 2022.
She added that extending gas infrastructure into neighbouring West African countries could help wean the region off biomass and other high-polluting fuels, describing gas as a transition fuel “not just for Nigeria, but for Africa, for the continent at large.”
On the broader climate debate, Eyesan pushed back against calls for a single, uniform net-zero pathway across Africa, arguing that differences in resource endowments, economic realities, and development priorities make a one-size-fits-all approach unworkable for the continent.
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