Nigeria looking up

Long-awaited legislative progress, peace in the Delta and some astute political management are creating optimism in the country's energy sector

Over the next five years, the federal government of Nigeria is looking to attract about $10bn in new investment into the country's energy sector. About $6bn is needed to fix its refineries and reduce petroleum product imports. The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) also intends to upgrade total refinery processing capacity to 0.7m barrels a day; a level that, even at 50% utilisation, would meet domestic demand. (Current nameplate capacity is about 450,000 b/d, but actual processing is much lower.) Much new spending is needed for gas pipelines and processing capacity; the NNPC has its own plans to build a 0.5bn cubic-feet-a-day gas processing plant to feed the power sector. Nigeri