Nigeria is still negotiating an agreement to export natural gas to neighboring Ghana, with proposed Ghanaian taxation of the gas a sticking issue, Nigerian oil ministry sources said. Nigeria also intends to supply Togo and Benin.

Nigerian oil minister Dan Etete will go to Ghana next week to try to resolve the disagreement, which sees Nigeria objecting to what it perceives as an excessive rate of tax which Ghana wants to impose. Nigeria fears Ghanaian consumers will be put off its gas if the tax is not lower, oil ministry sources said.

Once negotiations with Ghana are through, the laying of the pipelines would start, the sources said.

Group managing director of the state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corp. Chamberlain Oyibo, estimated Nigeria's probable gas reserves at 165 trillion standard cubic feet, and proven reserves are 110 trillion standard cubic feet. Current gas output is about 2 billion standard cubic feet per day, of which 1.65 billion is gas associated with crude production. Some 70 pct of the associated gas is flared off, an equivalent of 200,000 barrels per day o crude, Oyibo remarked. End