developing 800 MW of solar PV and wind capacity, with the tender process ongoing at the time of writing.

Gas demand in Libya has not increased over the past two years in spite of the decrease in pipeline exports to Italy. This reflects challenging production conditions owing to security issues in the country’s remote interior, which are likely to remain a major limitation to future production and domestic consumption growth.

Sub-Saharan Africa

Natural gas consumption in sub-Saharan Africa remains limited to producing countries and highly dependent on the availability of local resources, which are often dedicated to export when monetised. In the absence of defined gas connectivity projects and policies at the time of writing, this forecast expects a continuation of the observed growth trend, with an average of 2% per year growth in the sub-region.

Nigeria accounts for the large majority of natural gas consumption in sub-Saharan Africa, at an estimated 17 bcm in 2018. Power generation is the primary consumer of natural gas, just ahead of the oil and gas industry’s own use at about 40% of total domestic consumption. However, the country’s power system is hampered by the lack of feed gas availability to run power plants, a challenge that is not expected to disappear in the near future. On the industrial side, the Dangote fertiliser plant at Ibeju Lekki will upon completion be Africa’s largest, producing up to 2.8 Mtpa of urea. It is expected to receive 70 million cubic feet per day (or about 0.7 bcm/y) of natural gas feedstock as per the contract with state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and Chevron (Premium Times Nigeria, 2019). NNPC announced in March 2019 its intention to build 4 GW of (presumably gas-fired) independent power plants in Abuja, Kaduna and Kano to stabilise the grid, as well as a fertiliser plant in Brass, with a global objective of monetising the country’s natural gas reserves (NNPC, 2019). However, no FID or timeline have been confirmed at the time of writing – these projects are therefore not included in the present forecast.

Growth prospects for natural gas consumption appear limited in the near future in other West African countries. Côte d’Ivoire – where natural gas is used for power generation – announced the development of a new CCGT near Abidjan, which will increase efficiency and thereby enable higher electricity production without increasing gas consumption. The discovery and development of resources off the coast of Mauritania and Senegal does not so far include projects to develop a domestic market. Cameroon’s consumption grew at an average of 9% between 2011 and 2018 according to the Ministry of Energy, but this was mainly due to the expansion of the country’s refinery and no major projects are expected to further develop domestic demand. In Ghana, the LNG import project – on hold since late 2017 – revived at the end of 2018 with a floating regasification option.

Southern Africa shares a similar situation, with limited domestic market implications for Mozambique’s natural gas development projects, and no projects sanctioned yet in Tanzania. Natural gas demand in South Africa has remained stagnant in recent years; however, it forms an important part of the country’s future energy mix according to the 2018 draft version of the Integrated Resources Plan, with ambitions to install an additional 8.1 GW of gas-to-power capacity in South Africa by 2030 (Department of Energy, 2019). Several projects have been proposed, including power generation incumbent Eskom’s 3 GW CCGT at Richards Bay, but none have been confirmed at the time of writing.