Nigeria’s downstream regulator has set a firm date to end government control of domestic gas prices, targeting a fully commercial market by September 2028.
The Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority announced the timeline on Thursday, 24 September 2026, through its chief executive, Rabiu Umar, who spoke at the Gas Market Maturity Workshop held under the Decade of Gas initiative at the Petroleum Technology Development Fund in Abuja. Umar said the authority was working towards a fully established willing buyer, willing seller framework, in which prices are set by commercial contracts rather than by the regulator.
According to Umar, this is the first time the authority has fixed a clear target for the transition. He described the move as a 24 month effort to establish the conditions needed before price controls can be lifted, and framed it as a phased process rather than a single switch. “The journey we are starting should lead us to a place where we should target a 24-month at best period within which we will be able to declare the market to be truly a willing-buyer, willing-seller market,” he said.
The transition is provided for under the Petroleum Industry Act of 2021. Umar said Section 167 of the Act envisages a gradual shift from a market coordinated largely through regulation to one driven increasingly by contracts between buyers and sellers. The Act currently allows the regulator to set prices for strategic sectors, including power generation and gas based industries, which is the arrangement the 2028 target is meant to replace.
Umar linked the reform to wider policy goals, saying gas had to stay affordable for Nigerians while supporting the investment reforms of the Tinubu administration. He said the timeline aligned with the national aim of becoming a gas powered economy by 2030.
He was direct about the constraints. Umar said domestic gas supply remained tight despite Nigeria’s large reserves, and that the priority was not only building infrastructure but ensuring there was enough gas to fill it. He singled out major projects such as the Ajaokuta-Kaduna-Kano pipeline, saying they needed sufficient supply to become commercially useful.
According to Umar, the transition would not be based on broad statements of intent but on measurable indicators. He listed supply availability and diversity, the number and quality of buyers and sellers, access to transport infrastructure, the strength of contracts, payment reliability, delivery obligations, market information and credible price signals as the markers the authority would track. He said the sequencing would depend on which segments of the market were ready to move first, the thresholds they must meet and the safeguards required before liberalisation.
Umar also said the regulator’s own role would change as the market matured, with more emphasis on setting market rules, ensuring fair access, protecting competition and monitoring conduct. He disclosed that the authority had begun consultations on draft regulations targeting anti competitive practices, aimed at turning the competition provisions of the Act into enforceable rules. On distribution, he said the licensing process was nearing completion and that qualified companies would receive gas distribution licences in the fourth quarter of 2026.
Other speakers set out what the target would require in practice. The Coordinating Director of the Decade of Gas Secretariat, Ed Ubong, said Nigeria could reach a willing buyer, willing seller market before the end of the programme’s first horizon in 2030. Ubong said the programme had identified clear markers, including raising gas supply to 12.6 billion cubic feet per day by 2030, with 16 key infrastructure projects on the supply side and more than 60 demand side projects capable of creating about 15 billion cubic feet per day of demand.
The President of the Nigerian Gas Association, Yetunde Taiwo, said the transition had to be driven by clearly defined milestones. Taiwo said the association had long advocated a commercially driven market but stressed that the change must be properly sequenced to avoid moving either too early or too slowly. She called for stronger collaboration between government, regulators and industry, with government providing policy direction, regulators setting predictable rules, and operators continuing to invest and execute projects.
The 2028 date brings a longstanding debate to a head. Umar had told an industry conference in Lagos in early August that the shift would come within one to two years, and that Nigeria had not yet reached the required level of maturity, a position that drew pushback from producers. Some operators have argued that delaying market based pricing will stall development of the non associated gas fields needed for long term supply, since power plants, fertiliser factories and petrochemical firms typically contract gas on 15 to 20 year terms that associated gas alone cannot support.
What remains unsettled is whether the conditions Umar set will be met on schedule. The 2028 target is a stated intention tied to measurable benchmarks, not a guaranteed outcome, and it depends on infrastructure delivery, sufficient supply and the completion of the regulatory groundwork the authority has only begun. The pending distribution licences and the draft competition rules will be early tests of how far the market moves before the deadline.