Does Natural Gas Utilisation Improve Economic Wellbeing? Empirical Evidence from Nigeria

This study examined the effects of natural gas utilised on per capita income measured in term of purchasing power parity (economic wellbeing) in Nigeria from 2010 to 2020 using quarterly data sourced from International Energy Agency and the Central Bank of Nigeria. The Autoregressive and Distributed Lag (ARDL) technique was used to analyse the data after conducting descriptive statistics, trend analysis and unit roots test on the data. The result shows that in the long run, gas demanded for power and transport sectors as well as its cost contributed to a decline in per capita income which ultimately hampered economic wellbeing in Nigeria. On the other side, households and industrial sector demand for gas improved per capita income and, over time promoted long run economic wellbeing in Nigeria. The study also found an insignificant nexus between demand for gas by the various sectors and economic wellbeing in the long run. In the short run, gas utilised for power generation and the industrial sector had negative and significant impact on economic wellbeing while households demand for natural gas significantly improve economic wellbeing by increasing per capita income in Nigeria. Based on these results, the study concludes that gas demand had serious implication on economic wellbeing in the short run than long run. Also gas demand utilised by households had positive effect on economic wellbeing both in the long and short runs. Consequent upon the findings, the study recommends, increase in gas demand for household and industrial use by enhancing a competitive price for natural gas in order to enhance sustainable economic wellbeing in Nigeria.