Nigeria willing to raise oil exports to India: Deora

NEW DELHI: Nigeria, Africa’s largest crude oil and gas producer, is expected to increase its oil exports to India besides supplying liquefied natural gas ( LNG), a senior oil ministry official said.

“Nigeria is our friend and willing to help us in meeting our growing energy requirements,” Oil Minister Murli Deora said at Petrotech-2010 after a meeting with Nigerian President’s special adviser Emmanuel O Egbogah.

At the bilateral meeting, Mr Deora discussed the possibility of state-run Gail India and Petronet LNG picking up a stake in the $8-billion LNG project at Brass in the Niger delta.

“We expressed interest in sourcing LNG (on long-term contract) from Nigeria and discussed possibility of Gail and Petronet joining in a LNG project,” oil secretary S Sundareshan told reporters on the sidelines of Petrotech-2010, an international oil and gas event held in New Delhi.

State-run Nigeria National Petroleum Corp has a 49% stake in Brass project. French energy major Total, Eni of Italy and ConocoPhillips hold 17% stake each. India also wants Nigeria to export additional crude oil to India, Mr Sundareshan said.

“Mr Emanuel responded positively and said that the Indian side should send a formal proposal for government-to-government agreement in this regard,” he said.

The bilateral meet took place on Wednesday, two days after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh highlighted huge energy demand-supply gap in India at the inaugural session of the conference.

India’s energy demand would increase by over 40% in the next 10 years but supply from its ageing oil-fields was expected to increase around 12%, he had said.

Expressing concerns over the demand-supply mismatch, finance minister Pranab Mukherjee said the focus of India’s energy policies and bilateral agreements should be on meeting this gap.

India wants to increase its crude oil import from Nigeria, which plans to raise its production to 4 million barrels per day from 2.7 million barrels per day by 2012. India imports around 13 MMT crude oil from Nigeria annually.

According to the US Energy Information Administration January estimates, Nigeria had 185 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of proven natural gas reserves. The country had exported 500 billion cubic feet (bcf) LNG in 2009. Out of which, the US sourced 13.3 bcf or 3% of its LNG needs from Nigeria. Main customers of Nigerian LNG were Europe (66%), Asia (15%) and Mexico (16%).

Nigeria is the largest crude oil producer in Africa. Nigerian crude oil is light and sweet and commands a premium in the international market due to its quality.