Nigeria pushes gas into fast lane

Abuja turns to new gas promotion measures to ease the pain of removing unaffordable gasoline subsidies

“Gas is Nigeria’s new petrol,” petroleum minister Timipre Sylva said of the oil-dependent nation’s attempt to diversify and overcome the crude oil price volatility that perennially afflicts its econ­omic growth. He said it way back in June 2017, when the Federal Executive Council had just approved the National Gas Policy. But measures announced in September mean this vision could at last become reality for the country’s nearly 200mn people. The consumption of refined products in ­Africa’s largest economy has declined more rapidly than in many other countries in the wake of the pandemic, and this trend appears set to continue. The total volume of refined products consumed in the country decli