Gas market highly unstable, says Kachikwu

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The President of the Gas Exporting Countries’ Forum and Nigeria’s Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, has outlined reasons why the global gas market is currently unstable.

Speaking at the 17th ministerial meeting of the GECF in Tehran, Iran on Monday, Kachikwu identified market volatility, increasing competition, price war and escalating cost of infrastructure development as the key challenges facing the gas industry in general and the forum in particular.

The minister, according to a statement by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, stated that volatility had brought so much uncertainty and instability to the market, thus affecting decisions on investments for long term supply of gas.

He noted that increasing competition occasioned by the surge in new gas producers had led to a price war at a time when the cost of infrastructure development was escalating.

These developments, he argued, were setting the stage for even more challenges for the industry and the GECF member countries in the future.

Kachikwu, however, cautioned against reacting to the current challenges by failing to invest in the industry, assuring members of the forum that the current challenges would come to pass and the market would rebound given the world’s need for energy and the environmental credentials of gas as the cleanest hydrocarbon fuel.

Source: Punch