Emmanuel Addeh in Abuja
Portugal plans to increase purchases of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) from Nigeria and the United States as it aims to end already dwindling supplies from Russia, the country’s Environment Minister Maria da Graca Carvalho said yesterday.
Portugal imported 49,141 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of natural gas in 2024, of which around 96 per cent was LNG, data from electricity and gas grids operator, REN showed.
Nigeria accounted for 51 per cent of those LNG deliveries, about 40 per cent came from the United States and around 4.4 per cent came from Russia, a Reuters report said.
In 2021, Russia accounted for 15 per cent of Portugal’s LNG supply. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the European Union (EU) has implemented targeted sanctions on Russian oil and gas imported through pipelines, but has not prevented the import of LNG transported by ship into Europe.
“Portugal is now practically independent of Russian gas … but we want to reduce this figure further by importing more gas from Nigeria and the United States,” Graca Carvalho told a panel at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, according to economic website ECO.
US President Donald Trump has threatened the European Union with tariffs if countries do not increase their purchases of US energy.
ECO reported the minister urged greater cooperation within the 27-nation European Union to ensure energy independence and security, saying Iberia was still an “energy island” as it had “been difficult to build interconnections with France”.
At the start of the war between Russia and Ukraine, many delegations from the European Union visited Nigeria to explore the possibility of the country ramping up production and raising gas exports to the continent.
