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Nigeria sits on one of the largest natural gas reserves in Africa, yet its factories, power plants and households still fight for supply. That is the paradox laid out in a Financial Vanguard investigation published on Monday, which examines nearly two decades of gas policy and concludes that the country keeps selling more gas abroad than it sells at home. The reserves are not in doubt, with more than 200 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of proven gas. What has been missing, according to industry voices quoted in the report, is the machinery to turn that gas into dependable, affordable supply for Nigerians.
The scale of the imbalance is stark. Data from the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC), as summarized in coverage of the report, shows that Nigeria exported 4.56 Tcf of gas between 2022 and August 2026 while supplying 3.21 Tcf to the domestic market. In the first eight months of 2026 alone, exports reached 733.8 billion cubic feet against 516.8 billion cubic feet delivered at home, which means exports ran about 42 percent higher than domestic sales. The same ratio appears across the longer period, so the pattern is persistent and not a product of one unusual year. The regulator’s own figures are published on the NUPRC website for readers who want to check the numbers.
The policy list the report reviews is long. It includes the National Gas Policy, the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA), the Domestic Gas Delivery Obligation (DGDO), the Decade of Gas Initiative, various gas infrastructure projects and a proposed Gas Swap Framework. A separate piece on the sector’s history adds the 2023 Gas Pricing and Domestic Demand Regulations, the Natural Gas Pipeline Tariff Regulations, the Nigerian Gas Transportation Network Code and the National Gas Master Plan to the roster. The DGDO, in particular, was designed to force producers to set aside a portion of their output for local buyers. The Decade of Gas programme, declared in 2017, was meant to make gas the backbone of industrial growth, yet one legal commentator quoted in a related article said the sector attracted less than $1 billion in investment in the past year, with the initiative due to end in three years.
So why have so many policies produced so little? Stakeholders interviewed by Financial Vanguard put the problem less in the rules themselves than in the gap between reserves, production and delivery. An industry expert who asked not to be named said the central issue is the disconnect between what Nigeria has in the ground, what it produces and what actually reaches domestic consumers, and that until it closes, the country will remain a major gas producer whose consumers still depend on imported products. Bassey Essien, executive secretary of the Nigerian Association of Liquefied Petroleum Gas Marketers (NALPGAM), said the challenge is not a lack of gas but the failure to convert it into reliable local supply. Exports earn foreign exchange, he said, but the domestic market also has to be commercially attractive enough to secure adequate volumes.
That commercial point is the heart of the matter. A producer deciding where to sell gas compares what each buyer will pay and how reliably. Export customers, often buying liquefied natural gas on long-term contracts, pay in dollars and pay on time. Domestic buyers, especially power generation companies, have a history of payment delays and prices regulated below what producers want. Ken Ife, a lead consultant for industry development at the ECOWAS Commission, identified payment challenges, pipeline vandalism, infrastructure deficiencies and inadequate investment as the major constraints on domestic supply, as the report put it. When producers face a late-paying local customer and a pipeline that may be sabotaged, even a mandatory obligation can be hard to enforce in practice.
The consequences show up in everyday costs. Maxi Colman Obasi, national president of the Oil and Gas Services Providers Association of Nigeria (OGSPAN), told Financial Vanguard that inadequate gas supply is undermining power generation, raising business costs and limiting industrial growth. Gas feeds most of Nigeria’s grid-connected power plants, so a shortage upstream shows up as outages downstream, and businesses respond by buying diesel for generators. He added that Nigeria needs investment across the whole value chain, from gathering and processing to pipelines and distribution, rather than concentrating only on upstream production. His point reflects a long-running criticism that policies have prioritized getting gas out of the ground over getting it to users.
The proposed Gas Swap Framework is one attempt to address the logistics. Essien explained that it could connect producers who have gas but limited capacity to move it with operators who have pipelines or infrastructure but insufficient supply, improving the movement of gas to domestic consumers. The report notes experts’ caution that a swap arrangement is a logistical workaround, not a substitute for capital investment. In plain terms, it can make better use of existing pipes, but it cannot create the pipes that are missing. The details and timetable of the framework were not set out in the coverage reviewed.
The story matters beyond the gas industry because it sits beside this week’s debate on fuel prices. The federal government’s 30-day petrol discount at NNPC stations drew sharp criticism, and the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry urged the government to accelerate the deployment of alternatives such as compressed natural gas (CNG) and electric vehicle infrastructure to cut the cost of moving goods and people. CNG is gas, so a stronger domestic gas market is the foundation of that strategy. Without enough gas delivered to the right places at the right price, calls to shift transport to CNG remain aspirations. The same logic applies to cooking gas, where households that rely on liquefied petroleum gas are exposed to import prices and exchange-rate swings.
There is also a tension with other export plans. This month, NNPC and Ogun State opened talks on reviving the OgunLNG project, a liquefied natural gas plant that would be built mainly for export markets. LNG projects bring in foreign exchange and investment, but they also compete for gas that could be used at home. Whether a new plant helps or hurts domestic supply depends on how much gas it takes, whether new feed gas is developed alongside it and how obligations to supply local buyers are structured. That is an observation about the design question, not a finding from the Vanguard report, but it shows how export and domestic goals have to be balanced in each new project.
What would a fix look like? Based on the issues stakeholders raised, the list is familiar: reliable payment systems for gas buyers, with credible guarantees that suppliers will be paid; pipelines protected from vandalism and expanded to reach more consumers; prices that let producers earn a fair return on domestic sales; and a pipeline of investment across the value chain. None of this is simple, and each depends on public and private actors cooperating. The 18-year record suggests that policy announcements alone are not enough, and that results will depend on enforcement and money.
Readers who follow Nigeria’s energy, economy and technology stories can find more coverage at BusinessTech Nigeria. The original investigation is available from Vanguard, and the numbers it cites will be worth watching in the regulator’s monthly reports. For consumers, the bottom line is that Nigeria’s gas wealth is real, and the test of two decades of policy will be whether it finally reaches the people who live above it.
