“Natural gas is surely a cleaner fossil fuel but hydrogen is coming with a big bang too. Japan may soon become energy independent on hydrogen,” Tony Attah, MD/CEO, Nigeria LNG Limited, said at the BusinessDay’s Energy Series 2020. Japan bought NLNG from Nigeria in the past.
Attah presented Japan as an example of a nation with an ambitious hydrogen development plan, as an alternative source of energy. China is also unrolling a hydrogen plan.
China is focusing on building a fuel-cell supply chain and developing hydrogen-powered trucks and buses as part of a 15-year plan for new-energy vehicles released three months ago. President Xi Jinping in September set a 2030 deadline for China to begin reducing carbon emissions.
The world’s most populous nation is targeting to have 1 million fuel-cell vehicles in operation by 2030, according to an energy savings vehicle development plan drafted by authorities, despite only 2,700 such cars sold in the country last year.
The nation’s renewed interest in hydrogen could put it further ahead of the US in next-generation autos, even as President Joe Biden tries to promote clean-car development, a Bloomberg report said. This implies a reduction in the use of fossil fuel and internal combustion engines.
Nigeria’s export of crude oil to China was $970.81 million in 2019, according to the United Nations COMTRADE database on international trade.
Although Chinese buyers would generally buy only 1-2 cargoes from Nigeria, yet boosted by the economic profitability of West African countries in April 2020 there were four vessels sailing off to China and the May 2020 tally went even further to a whopping seven cargoes, totalling 9MMbbls.
Interestingly, both April and May witnessed an Egina cargo loading for China, despite it being a staple diet of Northwest European refiners.
China is also the world’s biggest market for electric vehicles. Officials are promoting the development of hydrogen-powered cars, trucks and buses, with Beijing, its capital, offering to reward cities that achieve adoption targets.
“Hydrogen is expected to play a much more important role to drastically decrease the country’s greenhouse gas emissions,” Kevin Jianjun Tu, a non-resident fellow at the French think tank, Ifri, wrote in a report published in October.
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In theory, fuel cells are an ideal alternative to the internal combustion engine since their chemical reactions of hydrogen and oxygen emit no carbon. Powering vehicles with hydrogen can be expensive, though, and most of China’s supply comes from burning fossil fuels. The difficulties of storing and transporting hydrogen add to the cost.
As the supply of hydrogen generated by solar and wind power grows, the economics may improve. One utility is spending more than $3 billion on wind and solar farm in Inner Mongolia that would produce as much as 500,000 tons of hydrogen a year, with operations expected to begin in 2021.
Nigeria’s decade of gas
At a recent business forum for gas in Nigeria, Timipre Sylva, minister of state for petroleum resources, declared a decade of gas to sustain the gains made after 2020 was declared a year of gas.
As the world prepares to implement bans on internal combustion engines, the earliest dates being 2030, it is time for Nigeria to double down on gas to spur economic developments. Gas is seen as a transitional fuel.
With 2003 trillion cubic feet (TCF) of proven natural gas reserves, Nigeria sits on Africa’s largest gas reserves. But the country’s capacity to develop, gather and process natural gas remains comparatively low. The Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) company has 22 million tons per annum capacity. Train 7 would increase it to 30 million tons when it comes on stream.
Nevertheless, Australia with 108TCF of gas reserves has 88 million tons capacity per annum. Malaysia has 97TCF of proven gas reserves with 29 – 30 million tons capacity per annum. Mozambique has about 50 – 120TCF of proven gas reserves and plans a 50-million tons capacity per annum.
