Nigeria has enough coal to meet power shortfall: experts

West Africa’s economic giant Nigeria, could easily solve its chronic power shortage problems by tapping into its coal reserves, energy experts said.

“Nigeria has an estimated three billion metric tons of coal reserves which it should exploit to solve its huge energy shortfalls,” Kabiru Yammama, a United Nations rural energy consultant, told AFP.
Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country with 140 million people, is facing an acute power shortage that throws the majority of its inhabitants into darkness for weeks or at times months and that forces hundreds of businesses to shut down.

“Our power demand stands at 20,000 megawatts but at the moment we are only able to generate 3,000 megawatts,” Ransom Owan, head of the state-run Nigeria Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), told AFP.

“We need to look into the possibility of exploiting other sources of power generation including coal to cover our enormous power deficit,” Owan said.

Nigeria has the largest coal reserves on the African continent. Moreover the country’s coal is sufficiently low in sulphur to be environmentally acceptable.

Yet production dropped sharply from 77,000 tons per year in 1990 to around 6,000 tons in 2004, industry sources say.

Among the factors responsible are obsolete equipment, an increase in production costs and a tendency on the part of consumers to turn towards other energy sources.

Tehran Times