By Maureen Okon

The European Union (EU) Delegation to Nigeria and ECOWAS said that it would replace the gas from Russia with Nigerian Gas due to the invasion in Ukraine.

Mr Matthew Baldwin, the Deputy Director-General Department for (Energy), European Commission in Brussels, said this at a news conference on Friday in Abuja.

Baldwin will meet with top Nigerian government officials and private sector players, including key stakeholders in the country’s energy sector.

Earlier, the EU had urged member states to slash their gas consumption by 15 percent as it warned that a complete shutdown of Russian supplies was “likely”.

Since the invasion of Ukraine, the EU has been scrambling to wean itself off Russian gas but is alarmed about a potential energy crisis this winter.

“In summary, I am on a mission from Europe to try to deliver liquefied natural gas (LNG) today in the context of the NLG partnership tomorrow with Nigeria.

“Europe is in a tight spot in relations to gas, following the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the instability in our gas market and the threat of cutting off supply altogether.”

“So, we have launched the energy platform task force and the primary goal is to reach out to our reliable partners such as Nigeria to replace the gas from Russia with gas from reliable partners.

“You would have seen that, perhaps early this week, we launched a gas demand reduction plan, and we are looking to reduce gas demand by 15 percent to manage the demand aspect of the equation.

“To be clear, we need to manage the supply side and that’s why we want to expand what is currently at 14 percent of our total LNG import from Nigeria and we want it to go up.

“Our gas percentage was 60 percent but now we want to go,’’ he said.