KANO (AFP) -- West Africa’s economic giant Nigeria, could easily solve its chronic power shortage problems by tapping into its coal reserves, energy experts said.

“Nigeria has an estimated three billion metric tons of coal reserves which it should exploit to solve its huge energy shortfalls,” Kabiru Yammama, a United Nations rural energy consultant, told AFP.
“It provides one of the best alternative sources of power for Nigeria due to its availability, easy usage and high heat emission,” Yammama said.
Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country with 140 million people, is facing an acute power shortage that throws the majority of its inhabitants into darkness for weeks or at times months and that forces hundreds of businesses to shut down.
“Our power demand stands at 20,000 megawatts but at the moment we are only able to generate 3,000 megawatts,” Ransom Owan, head of the state-run Nigeria Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), told AFP.
“We need to look into the possibility of exploiting other sources of power generation including coal to cover our enormous power deficit,” Owan said.
“We have abundant coal for energy production. We can set up coal plants to generate enough electricity to meet our power demand,” Abubakar Sambo, head of the Energy Commission of Nigeria (ECN) told AFP.
ECN is a state-run think-tank in charge of energy sector planning and diversification.
Nigeria has the largest coal reserves on the African continent. Moreover the country’s coal is sufficiently low in sulphur to be environmentally acceptable.
Yet production dropped sharply from 77,000 tons per year in 1990 to around 6,000 tons in 2004, industry sources say.
Among the factors responsible are obsolete equipment, an increase in production costs and a tendency on the part of consumers to turn towards other energy sources.
Nigeria generates its power from a hydro-electric power plant in central Niger State that has been operating with obsolete equipment.
Under former president Olusegun Obasanjo, in office from 1999 to 2007, Nigeria spent between 12 and 16 billion dollars (10.3 billion euros) to improve the power sector but without a commensurate result.
That prompted parliament to probe allegations that funds were embezzled by officials.
According to a 2006 report from the London-based World Coal Institute, coal accounts for 40 percent of electricity generation worldwide.
Despite the issuance of a dozen licenses to local and foreign firms to set up private power plants and construct 11 thermal stations, there seems to be no end in sight for Nigeria’s power crisis.
Nigeria expects to double its power generation to 6,000 megawatts in two years when these thermal stations take off, just enough to provide some hours of power a day, Owan said.
This looks an ambitious plan considering that the thermal stations are still under construction and are not yet on the gas supply list of the state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).
“With the militant activities in the Niger Delta, gas supplies to the thermal power stations can be disrupted and force the plants to shut down and power generation will drop,” Yammama said.
Violence in the restive region in the past two years has reduced Nigeria’s total production by a quarter. Nigeria is Africa’s largest oil producer.
“Coal is a better alternative,” Sambo said.
But he warned that Nigeria would have to bring in costly clean-coal technology to avoid gas emissions.
The country would also have set up enough coal mines, a time-consuming and capital intensive effort that requires the participation of foreign investors, he added.
“Despite the inherent problems associated with coal mining and conversion to electricity I believe in three to five years Nigeria can start exploiting coal in sufficient quantities to meet its electricity demand,” he added.