World recoverable natural gas to increase by 40 per cent, says EIA

THE Energy Information Agency (EIA), the independent data and analysis arm of the U.S. Department of Energy has estimated an increase in worlds recoverable natural gas by more than 40 per cent, after assessing shale gas deposits in 32 countries outside the United States. Nigeria has an estimated 176 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of proven natural gas reserves, giving the country one of the top ten natural gas endowments in the world and the largest endowment in Africa.The government plans to raise earnings from natural gas exports to 50 per cent of oil revenues and to remove subsidies from natural gas.NNPC estimated that $15 billion in private sector investments is necessary to meet its natural gas development goals by 2010.The Nigeria government believed that full implementation of the entire gas master plan agenda will result in about $25 billion worth of investments in gas processing, transmission and downstream gas utilisation projects.According to the EIA in its quarterly gas report released recently, there could be at least 9.27 quadrillion, cubic feet (cu ft) of gas worldwide that could be pumped economically at current prices, up from its previous estimate of 6.62 quadrillion cu ft of reserves. The EIA puts the technically recoverable natural gas resources in the assessed basins to total 5,760 Tcf.Adding the estimated U.S. shale gas technically recoverable resources (862 Tcf) to the assessments in the study gives a total of 6,622 Tcf. For comparison, most current estimates of world technically recoverable natural gas resources include few if any of the resources assessed in this study and total about 16,000 Tcf, it said.Commenting on the report, EIAs Administrator, Richard Newell stated, adding identified shale gas resources to current estimates of other gas resources, increases total world technically recoverable resources by over 40 per cent, to more than 22,000 trillion cubic feet.The International Energy Agency (IEA) had said that the worlds natural gas producers would need to increase supplies by almost 50 trillion cubic feet by 2035.It stated, substantial growth in natural gas production is also projected for Africa, where production is expected to increase to 12.7 trillion cubic feet in 2020 and 14.0 trillion cubic feet in 2035.
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