Africa’s biggest economy is on the cusp of making history as Nigeria-based Riverside LNG said it’s in talks to supply gas to South Africa, in what would be the first such deal between the two countries.
According to Bloomberg, Riverside LNG is hoping to clinch a gas supply deal in the first quarter of 2024.
The company earlier this year signed a gas-export partnership agreement with Johannes Schuetze Energy Import AG of Germany and is now looking for deals on the continent, David Ige, the company’s chief executive officer said.
Ige said, “We’d probably very early in the year close out another segment of the market, an off-take for South Africa”.
“There’s a massively evolving gas market in the region, anything around 3,000 nautical miles of Nigeria. So that covers southern Africa, western Africa, all to northwest Europe and to the Caribbean and South America broadly,” Ige told newsmen in Abuja.
Meanwhile, Ige refrained from divulging additional information about discussions with South African counterparts, citing confidentiality clauses. Additionally, the company is actively investigating potential opportunities in Liberia and Cameroon.
Last year, Nigeria’s LNG exports totalled some 14.7 million mt, according to data from S&P Global Commodity Insights, and so far this year have reached 12.5 million mt.
Spain has taken the most Nigerian LNG in 2023 to date, with imports of 3.3 million mt followed by Portugal (1.4 million mt) and China (0.9 million mt).