NIGERIA’S fledgling petrochemical and natural gas sectors will be expanded to be on a par with the oil sector within four years, President Olusegun Obasanjo said on Friday. Setting out economic plans, Obasanjo told legislators at a joint sitting of the new Nigerian parliament that these two under-developed areas of the oil industry would be a key element in the country’s economic recovery. Earning around $10-billion a year from sales of crude oil, Nigeria is the world’s seventh largest producer of the commodity and also has extensive and largely untapped reserves of natural gas. The gas sector is expanding however and recently a joint venture, Nigeria LNG, operated with Anglo-Dutch group Shell and other partners, announced plans to make its first exports of liquefied natural gas in October.