Country Flared $72bn Gas in 36 Years, Says NGA

Daily Trust (Abuja)
NEWS
27 June 2008
Posted to the web 27 June 2008

By Hamisu Muhammad
Abuja
Nigeria's inability to stop gas flaring by oil companies, has cost the nation $72 billion (about N8.4 trillion) in three decades, a data released by the Nigeria Gas Association (NGA), has revealed.
The data shows that between 1970 and 2006 Nigeria lost some $72 billion as a result of gas flaring at an average of $2.5 billion per annum.


At the NGA's 2nd Business Forum in Abuja yesterday, the President of NGA, Engr. Chris Ogiemwonyi, who released the data said the level of flaring in the country is on the average of 1.2 Trillion Cubic feet of gas annually.
The government set January 1, this year for all oil companies to stop gas flaring but the dateline has been shifted to December.
Engr. Ogiemwonyi who is also the Group Executive Director, Exploration and Production of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) said when the wider effect of the environmental, economy and social consequences are factored in, "we could potentially be discussing numbers in the region of $150 billion in real terms".

He said after 50 years of oil production most of the country's producing fields are characterized by routine flares with "little visible efforts" to take out the flares in the near future.
He said the operators have consistently feared the risk of oil shut-in when asked to implement gas flare saying that the oil producing companies have claimed that about 870,000 barrels of oil will be shut-in amounting to a revenue loss of billions of dollars.

Engr. Ogiemwonyi, who is also the immediate past Managing Director of the Nigerian Gas Company (NGC), said what Nigeria needs are capital project implementation towards gas flare down as demonstrated by Nigeria's Liquefied Natural Gas, Condensate recovery, gas gathering and gas re-injection project among others.
"We expect that operating companies will quickly aligned with government in realizing the Nigerian Gas Mater Plan and vision the Master Plan as the catalyst to realizing that potential of gas as a great enabler towards Nigeria's growth aspirations"

Also speaking, Minister of State for Energy (Gas), Mr. Emmanuel Odusina, said under the Gas Master Plan, there is a proposal for three backbone gas transmission system which will be operated independently, but will be interconnected to form a gas grid.

"The South-North transmission system comprises of 1135 km of 45-inch pipeline system originating from Akwa-Ibom/Calabar Central Processing Facility (CFP), traversing Abia, Ebonyi, Enugu, Kano and Kaduna State via Ajaokuta and Abuja".