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Nigeria MINING, PETROLEUM, AND ENERGY RESOURCES
Petroleum products accounted for two-thirds of the
energy
consumed in 1990, but Nigeria also had substantial
resources in
the form of hydroelectricity, wood, subbituminous coal,
charcoal,
and lignite. In the 1980s, most cooking was done with wood
fuels,
although in urban areas petroleum use increased. Coal,
originally
mined as fuel for railroads, largely had been replaced by
diesel
oil except in a few industrial establishments. Coal
production
fell from 940,000 tons in 1958 to 73,000 tons in 1986,
only a
fraction of 1 percent of Nigeria's commercially produced
energy.
Tin and columbite output fell from the 1960s through
the
1980s as high-grade ore reserves became exhausted. A
fraction of
the extensive deposits of iron ore began to be mined in
the mid1980s , and uranium was discovered but not exploited.
Almost none
of these minerals left the country, however, as petroleum
continued to account for virtually all of Nigeria's
mineral
exports.
Mining contributed 1.0 percent of GDP in FY 1959, on
the eve
of independence. This sector's share (including petroleum)
stood
at more than 14 percent in 1988. Mining's general upward
trend
since l959, as well as the fluctuations in the size of its
contribution to GDP, can be attributed to the expansion
and
instability of the world oil market since 1973.
Data as of June 1991
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