European Union (EU) delegation to Nigeria and ECOWAS has promised to use Nigerian gas to replace gas from Russia due to latter’s invasion of neighbouring Ukraine.
Following sanctions from the European Union against Russia, the EU’s executive body recently urged member states to slash their gas consumption by 15%, warning that a complete shutdown of Russian supplies was “likely.”
Deputy director-general department for (energy), European Commission in Brussels, Mr. Matthew Baldwin, told newsmen in Abuja at the weekend that he is in Nigeria to meeting with Nigerian top government officials and private sector players, including key stakeholders in the country’s energy sector.
The EU has been scrambling to wean itself off Russian gas since the invasion of Ukraine, but analysts and researchers have been warning about a potential energy crisis this winter.
“In summary, I am on a mission from Europe to try to deliver liquefied natural gas (LNG) today in the context of NLG partnership tomorrow with Nigeria. Europe is in a tight spot in relations to gas, following the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the instability in our gas market and the threat of cutting off supply altogether.
“So, we have launched the energy platform task force and the primary goal is to reach out to our reliable partners such as Nigeria to replace the gas from Russia with gas from reliable partners,” he said.
The EU chief explained early last week, Europe launched a gas demand reduction plan, pointing out that the bloc is looking forward to reducing demand of gas by 15% to manage the demand aspect of the equation.
“To be clear, we need to manage the supply side and that’s why we want to expand what is currently at 14% shares of our total LNG import from Nigeria and we want it to go up. Our gas percentage was 60% but now we want to go,’’ Baldwin stated.
He stressed that Nigerian products had an extraordinary potentials and that was why EU wanted to expand the short term delivery. He added that by the end of August this year, the EU will hopefully to kick start the partnership with Nigeria.
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