Nigeria and the global LNG Surge 2026-2030

The overall purpose of this article is to draw attention once again to the global surge in liquefied natural gas (LNG) supply and demand in the next five years and throw a challenge to Nigeria‘s gas sector managers for a policy response. It is a follow-up to my article of January 19, 2026 titled, “Update on the global natural gas and LNG market.” That article ended with a long concluding paragraph, which started thus: “The bottom-line of this article is: how does Nigeria take an advantageous position in monetizing its huge natural gas deposits both for domestic use and export? What can we learn from the aggressive expansion of liquefaction facilities in the United States and Qatar, especially?” That article also contained some factual errors which I regret and want to use the opportunity of this follow-up article to correct: The current capacity of Nigeria LNG is 22 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) and not 23 mtpa; and its Train 7 is expected to add 8 mtpa and not 7 mtpa. Also, the abandoned LNG project in the eastern Niger Delta region is Brass LNG and not Bonny LNG.

While the previous article gave a global update on natural gas and LNG for 2026 and trend up to 2050, this current article is focusing exclusively on LNG trend, both in the short-term, 2026, and in the medium term, 2026-2030. The reasons are that LNG liquefaction and regasification plants are quicker to build and expand than gas pipelines as means of gas export. As a result LNG is going to become an increasingly more important mode of gas export in the decades ahead. This means Nigeria will have to invest more aggressively in LNG plants if it wants to remain relevant in the global LNG export market in the years ahead. The information used in this article was exclusively sourced from the International Energy Agency (IEA) based in Paris, France.

2025 marked a turning point in the global LNG market. The market’s fundamentals were quite tight in the first half of 2025, compared to 2024 as a result of weak industrial activity and higher spot prices. The market grew only 4% in the first half of the year. However, the second half of the year saw the LNG market growing by 10% as a result of strong production growth, which helped to record an overall growth of 7% for 2025, driven largely by expanded liquefaction facilities in North America – the United States, Canada and Mexico. This rapid expansion in global LNG supply is expected to be sustained in 2026 attaining the highest rate of growth since 2019. In IEA’s forecast, LNG supply is expected to grow by over 7% or over 40 billion cubic meters (bcm) per year in 2026. This “unfolding LNG wave” is expected to impact positively on global LNG demand in 2026, driven by demand in China and emerging Asian markets, much in the spirit of Say’s Law: “supply creating its own demand.”

The United States led the wave of investment in new LNG plants and expansion of existing plants in 2025. Globally, final investment decisions (FIDs) in LNG liquefaction capacity reached 90 bcm/y in 2025, making it the second strongest year for LNG FID after 2019. The United States alone accounted for 80 bcm/y capacity of the FIDs in 2025, thus strengthening its position as the leading LNG supplier in the world. This is expected to increase its global LNG market share from about 25% in 2025 to around 33% in 2030. The United States, Canada and Mexico are expected to account for 85% of global LNG supply in 2026, according to IEA.

There was a corresponding increase in LNG contracting activity in 2025 with 130 bcm per year of contracts signed. This represented the largest volume of LNG contracting signed since the previous ten years, with the United States accounting for half of them. LNG volumes contracted by European buyers in 2025 doubled to 25 bcm per year, compared to 2024.

Global LNG capacity is expected to expand by over 40% between 2025 and 2030, driven largely by the United States and Qatar. During this period, about 300-325 bcm per year capacity are expected to be added by 2030, bringing total global LNG capacity to over 970 bcm/y, according to IEA forecasts.

Nigeria LNG Train 7 is expected to add 8 million tonnes per annum (mtpa), which is 11.04 million cubic meters (mcm) per year, and is expected to increase Nigeria LNG’s total liquefaction capacity to 30 mtpa or 41.4 mcm per year. With global LNG forecast to rise to between 460 to 484 mtpa by the end of 2026, it is quite clear that Nigeria’s contribution to global trade in LNG is a drop in the ocean, relatively speaking.

Thus, Nigeria has a huge challenge on the need to ramp up LNG production and export in the next five to ten years. Unless Nigeria designs ways to rapidly expand its gas liquefaction capacity through building additional LNG plants, by 2030 when global LNG capacity is expected to rise to over 970 bcm/y, Nigeria LNG’s 30 mtpa or 41.4 bcm/y capacity would be about 4.2% of global LNG export capacity. As one of the top ten countries with the largest proven gas deposits in the world, Nigeria should aspire to supply about 10% of global LNG export.

One of the “drawbacks” of the Decade of Gas initiative is that it is heavily focused on domestic utilisation of gas to power gas-fired power plants, and for industrialisation and domestic consumption, which are necessary and legitimate economic objectives. However, sufficient attention needs to be given to ramping up Nigeria’s gas export through new LNG plants, including a number of floating LNG (FLNG) plants. Thus, the abandoned Brass LNG and Olokola LNG projects should be revived or in the alternative other LNG projects should be conceived and vigorously pursued to realisation. Nigeria does not have the technological and financial muscles of the United States to structure so many LNG FIDs simultaneously, but we can do our best drawing inspiration from Qatar which has massively invested in a fleet of LNG plants to leapfrog into a first world economy within a generation (30 years). The Nigeria Morocco Gas Pipeline project is commendable, but it is going to take at least 20 for most of its benefits to be realisable, which is why gas liquefaction (LNG) has a greater advantage to expanding gas export base more quickly.

The foregoing makes it even more urgent for the establishment of a Ministry of Gas Development and Industrialisation as canvassed in my last article to take the percentage of Nigeria’s gas production to its proven gas reserves from the present 1%-1.5% to 5% in the next ten years, and its LNG export from 4.2% of global LNG export to 10% in the next ten years along with the domestic gas utilisation objectives. Nigeria is sitting on the 8th largest proven global gas reserve with very little benefits to the nation and people. That has to stop. Nigeria cannot achieve a trillion dollar economy without investing heavily in gas development and export.

• Mr. Igbinoba is Team Lead/CEOs at ProServe Options Consulting, Lagos