The Nigerian journey to a competitive and efficient private sector-led electricity market is full of challenges from gas constraints, inadequate generation, and transmission of power to inefficient distribution of electricity to End-Users. Unfortunately, the sector now faces the negative impacts of the prevalence of the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. The myriads of issues plaguing the Nigerian power sector seems to be in constant reiteration.
The pandemic COVID-19 is one whose impact is unparalleled in history. Although advances in technology has helped in containment, the pandemic spread still poses a strong challenge. This has resulted in countries of the world gathering resources, both intellectual and financial, to combat a common enemy. In spite of this, there appears to be an increase in the spread globally with countries recording daily deaths and increases of up to a thousand and more.
December 2019 birthed some pneumonia cases in Wuhan, China. According to some laboratory findings, the sickness was caused by a virus called Corona Virus (COVID-19). The disease is a new virus linked to some family of viruses known as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and was described as a deadly disease that causes serious respiratory conditions as well as influenza. The virus spreads primarily when an infected person coughs or sneezes and by touching of contaminated surfaces.
This paper x-rayed the emergence of coronavirus (COVID-19) disease and its impact on the current price of oil and gas products in the international market. This COVID-19 pandemic had revealed many weaknesses in the world’s major global economies, and its attendant effect is conspicuously visible and cut across several institutions and industries: from the financial institutions to health, agriculture, tourism and hospitality, electricity, oil and gas.
In December 2019, China reported an outbreak of a disease that swept through Wuhan in the Hubei Province. Since then, globally, 4, 629, 575 cases have been confirmed as at 17th May, 2020, with 311, 363 deaths (Johns Hopkins, 2020). In Nigeria, the first case was recorded on the 27th of February, and since then, a total of 5, 671 cases have been confirmed from 32, 942 tests, 1, 472 persons discharged and 176 deaths at the time of writing, (NCDC, 2020).
The Covid-19 (Coronavirus) outbreak has had a global impact on the World Economy. The Energy Sector is in deep crises and oil-dependent Mono-Economies, like Nigeria are hit the most. The impact of the virus on the Energy Sector is still evolving, thereby requiring constant reviewing of events and developing strategies to revive the sector and economy as a whole. This non-technical article provides an overview of events, the effects on Nigeria’s Energy Sector and expectations.
Since the debut of COVID-19 in Nigeria on 27th February 2020, the Nigerian economy appeared to have entered turbulence. Thirteen days after its importation from Italy, precisely March 11, the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared COVID-19 a global pandemic.
The outbreak of Coronavirus in December 2019 which started from a small city called Wuhan in China has an epidemic and subsequently spread to become a global pandemic barely three months after, this pandemic also has an adverse effect on many countries economy and it has affected the economy globally. It has caused the closures of businesses, the stoppage of factory outputs, and the disruption to global manufacturing industries and their supply networks. The economic shock propagates downstream to customers through lack of supplies, and upstream to suppliers through lack of demand.
The COVID-19 pandemic which first emerged in China in December 2019 has resulted in severe disruption to human and economic activity around the world. The disease which emerged in China’s Hubei province has since spread rapidly to Asia, Europe, USA and the rest of the World. The virus has a similar strain to the SARS-CoV-1 virus that affected over 8,000 people in 2002/2003 (WHO, 2012). Unlike the SARS pandemic where less than 100,000 people were infected, the COVID-19 virus has infected over 4.6million people and this number is still on the rise.
The Oil and Gas (O&G) industry has continued to be the mainstay of the Nigerian economy despite Government’s best efforts at diversification into Agriculture and Mining. According to a recent report, even though the sector is less than 10% of the country’s GDP, it contributes about 65%, of Government revenue and 88% of Nigeria’s foreign exchange earnings (Ajayi (2019).