Sensitivity Between Economic Growth and Gas Consumption in Nigeria

This paper build on the existing research (Adamu, A. and Darma M. (2016)) to further analyse the dynamic relationship between gas consumption and economic growth in the Nigeria. This helps to discover if sudden increase in the gas consumption can positively affect economic growth immediately. After administering VAR model, impulse response function and variance decomposition economic techniques were used to analyse the sensitivity between economic growth and gas consumption in the country. The research found that change in economic growth in the country cannot be explained by gas consumption in the period of shock, but change in gas consumption in the period of shock can be explained largely by changes in its own self and then by changes in economic growth. However, the change in gas consumption responded negatively to shock in the change in economic growth and vice versa in the period of the shock, but in subsequent period, change in gas consumption responded positively to change in economic growth. We concluded that among other variables, change in gas consumption has more influence to the movements of the economic growth, which further discovered the unique relationship between the gas consumption and real economic growth in the country in the event of shocks. Gas consumption is highly and positively responsive to its own innovation, which means direct investment in the sector can result to significant improvement in the gas consumption. The development of domestic gas consumption cannot significantly come as a result of shocks or intervention in the other sectors, it has to be a deliberate actions and interventions to enhance the gas development. Keywords: Gas Consumption, Economic Growth, Nigeria, Shock, Sensitivit

Using natural gas to meet latent energy demand in Nigeria and deliver economic advantage

PhD ThesisNigeria was ranked second worst country in terms of gas flaring, its domestic energy demands keep increasing in the wake of inadequate alternative cleaner (compare to oil) energy sources like natural gas. This is why Nigerian gas master plan was proposed to develop the natural gas for domestic utilization. Consequently, this research studied the economics of different gas development projects that Nigeria can develop to meet latent energy demands and achieve the objectives of the gas plan. It also assessed the relationship between domestic gas consumption and real economic growth in the country. The research used gas pipeline models that already exist in literature to analyse the investment cost, gas deliveries as well as costs and benefits of six possible gas pipeline routes options in the country. The BSRO pipelines route option was found to be more viable and estimated to have an annual gas delivery of 37.25 bcm, investment cost of $1.15 billion, NPV of$2.43 billion, IRR of 50.38%, payback period of 2.60 years for forty years of operation. However, in terms of coverage and ability to supply more gas to more locations, the all gas pipeline route option is more recommendable. The pipelines are more sensitive to discount rate, cost of gas transportation and capacity. Other gas pipeline routes options are also viable except the NRO gas pipelines, and it is recommended not to consider this option alone, even in the future, the best recommendation is to combine it with the BRO pipelines option. Costs and benefits analysis of two other gas development projects (CCGT and GTL plants) were presented using net present value, internal rate of return and payback period accounting methods, and CCGT project was found to be viable and GTL project not viable in the country. Even though GTL project was found to be unviable at the market scenarios in the country, incentives are recommended to attract investment for this important gas development project. Both projects are more sensitive to their product prices. To analyse the effect of gas development on the country’s economy, an ARDL bound cointegration test, impulse response functions, variance decompositions and granger causality econometric methods were used in two different model specifications. The first model specification added real capital formation and real exports, and found no cointegration among the specified variables. However, it was found that among these variables, gas consumption has more influence to the movements in the real GDP than the other variables. Gas consumption is found to be highly and positively responsive to its own innovation, which means direct iii investment in the sector can result to significant improvement in the gas consumption in the country. However, in the second model specification, where oil production, gas consumption and real GDP were used, cointegration was found, and positive and significant long run relationship was found between gas consumption and real economic growth, where a persistent 1% increase in domestic gas consumption in the long run causes 2.89% increase in real economic growth in the country. It was also found that the country is likely to be facing the economic problem of resource curse due to the potential adverse effect of crude oil production on real GDP, even though this is not statistically significantly justified. The research also found that gas consumption cannot predict real economic growth in Nigeria and vice versa as both variables are independent of each other at the current trend. However, if gas flaring is stopped, and more investment as well as further infrastructures are provided in the gas sector in the country, the gas sector can then start to feed in more to the economic productivity, and thereby making the economy dependent on the gas sector eventually due to continues increase in gas consumption, and then the significant link between gas consumption and economic growth can be actualised. In addition, direct investment in gas development can lead to high positive impact on the gas consumption as discovered in this research. Natural gas should be supplied to residential and commercial sectors to stimulate more domestic gas demand through gas pipelines, CCGT and GTL. The country’s economy should be diversified to tackle the likely problem of resource curse. The findings of this research further justified the Nigeria gas master plan’s objective and serves as an academic guide toward actualizing and extending the objective of the plan in the country.Petroleum Technology Development Fun

The Treasury Single Account (TSA) as an Instrument of Financial Prudence and Management: Prospects and Problems

The Treasury Single Account (TSA) was recently implemented fully in the Nigerian economy by the present government in order to ensure prudence and probity in the management of financial resources. With the TSA government expects to block all loopholes and leakages of financial resources of the government and also ensure a robust financial management system. The paper therefore provides the conceptual meaning of the TSA and also gives its expected benefits to the economy of Nigeria such as enhance system of financial management and control, unification of various Accounts of government, reduction of the costs of government borrowing and ensuring of optimum utilization of government financial resources. The paper also analyses the objectives of the TSA systems and its various Accounts such as TSA main account, Subsidiary Account, ZBAs, Transit and Imprest Account among others. The paper finally discusses the prospects of the TSA system and its challenges and concludes that the system requires political will, honesty and determination so as to overcome the various challenges identified in the paper in order to achieve the expected benefits of the system Keywords: Single treasury account, probity, financial prudence and accountabilit

Analysis of the probability of channel satisfactory state in P2P live streaming systems

In this paper a model based on user behaviour of P2P live streaming systems was developed in order to analyse one of the key QoS parameter of such systems, i.e. the probability of channel-satisfactory state, the impact of upload bandwidths and channels’ popularity on the probability of channel-satisfactory state was also analysed. Results obtained have shown that channels with high number of patronising peers achieve satisfactory state easily while channels with low number of peers hardly attain satisfactory state. This called for the need to design a framework or incentive scheme for effective functionality of P2P live streaming systems which will favour all channels regardless of their popularities.Keywords: P2P Systems, QoS Parameters, Satisfactory State, Video Streaming, Fluid Mod

Hand-held cow horn: resurgence of an old arm or apotential terrorist weapon

A 23 year old man presented with intestinal evisceration from stab injury to the left side of the abdomen with a hand-held cow horn at a local night party. He complained of severe abdominal pain and bleeding at the site of injury. He was hemodynamically stable. At emergency exploration, the eviscerated bowel was viable with no adjacent mesenteric tear. Other intra abdominal organs were normal. The eviscerated bowel was lavaged and reduced into the abdomen through the 7cm anterior abdominal wall laceration. The laceration was repaired and abdomen closed in layers. Post operative recovery was uneventful. The hand-held cow horn can easily be concealed and may pass through security checks undetected. It should be added to the ever increasing list of weapons of small scale terror

Effect of Boko Haram Insurgency on Irrigation Activities Using Field and Earth Observation Data in Part of Northeastern Nigeria

The Boko Hara Insurgency in Nigeria has affected the socio-economic activities in most parts of the northeastern part of the country, leading to a low supply of food from agricultural output and increased poverty. Therefore, the main objective of this paper is to analyse the effect of the Boko Haram insurgency on irrigation activities in Kukuwa village. Data was sourced for interviews of 240 respondents and Landsat8_OLI for 2014 and Sentinel 2 for 2015 to 2019. The images were converted to NDVI and used to determine the spectral signatures for each crop using Spectral Matching Techniques (SMTs). The result indicated the majority of the farmers irrigated their farms as > 2 ha (69%) before the crisis, 2 ha (87%) during the crises and > 2 ha (62%) after the crisis, and the majority hired farmers for labour. The intensity of the irrigation was reduced during the crises and it increased after the crises. The result of the SMTs in 2014 indicated a high spectral signature for irrigation activities, with 227.07ha (29.6%) for tomatoes. In 2015 and 2016, low spectral signatures for crops were observed for 541.69ha (69.80%) and 519.5ha (66.94%), respectively. While the spectral result in 2017, 2018, and 2019 indicates a good appreciation of irrigation activities, which shows an increase in most of the dominant crops cultivated in the area, such as tomato, onion, watermelon, and pepper. Among the breakthroughs of this paper is the analysing the reflected signatures from the classified image for different crops through irrigation activities during and after the insurgency in the area. The accuracy assessment indicated fairly good with Landsat but very good with the sentinel images. The study suggests further research into the effect of Boko Haram insurgency for rainfed agriculture using Earth Observation Data

Relationship Between Chemical Composition and User Perception on Wood-Charcoal Species Preference in Bauchi Metropolis, Nigeria

Urban least well-off and poor households in Bauchi Metropolis face challenge of accessing affordable, reliable and sustainable cooking and heating fuel supplies. As such, the urban least well-off and poor have leveraged their energy demands on use of wood-charcoals, which produced and utilise through mostly informal supply and demand chains that are associated to low efficiency in production methods and ineffective household utilisation factors that contribute to environmental and health dilapidation. This study sought to establish the relationship between physico-chemical characteristics of wood-charcoals commonly produced and utilised and users perception on charcoal species preference in Bauchi Metropolis. A laboratory experiment was conducted to determine the physico-chemical characteristics of the wood-charcoals. This was done prior to the field survey on perception preference to users to collaborate their views or otherwise on the burning and fuelling characteristics of the examined wood-charcoal species. A survey was undertaken using questionnaires to assess the users perception preference on the commonly used wood-charcoal species in terms of their solidity, ease of ignition, heat output intensity, rate of devolatilisation, burning time, ash generation and smoke. Of all the wood-charcoal species examined, Ficus platyphylla (Ganji) and Anogeissus leiocarpus (Marke) had low moisture contents (4.17, 4.60%25, respectively), high calorific value (33.58, 30.09 Mj%252Fkg, respectively) and low ash content (5.35, 6.51%25, respectively) together with their glassy index evident by high aluminium, potassium, and silicon contents, indicating that these charcoal species have high-quality combustion and fuel outputs compared to other charcoal species with least combustion and fuel characteristics. Despite these qualities, these species cant provide cleaner energy that could cut pollutant emissions, and at the same time bring huge environmental quality and health benefits, yet users perceptibly give preference to these charcoal species based on their combustion and fuelling performance impression

Financial Costs and Benefits Analysis of Gas Development Projects in Nigeria

Natural Gas possesses huge potential to addressing energy and petrochemical needs of Nigeria. Despite the abundance of this resource, inadequacy and relative expensiveness of power and energy fuels/feeds pose threat to the economic prosperity of the country. To address these challenges and to harness the potentials of gas in Nigeria, there is need for increased investment for gas development to meet latent energy demand in the country. Therefore, this research explored the viability of two important gas development projects to provide a case for investors to invest in the gas sector of the country. As a result, costs and benefits of two gas development projects (CCGT and GTL plants) were analysed using net present value, internal rate of return and payback period accounting methods, and CCGT project was found to be viable and GTL project not viable in the country. Even though GTL project was found to be unviable at the market scenarios in the country, incentives are recommended to attract investment for this important gas development project. Keywords: CCGT, GTL, NPV, IRR, Payback Period, Nigeria, Natural Gas, Economic Growt