Nigeria raises hope to end gas flaring by 2020

THE Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, has renewed the Federal Government’s commitment to end gas flaring by 2020.

The Minister, who gave this assurance in the monthly bulletin of Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), said Nigeria’s desire is to end gas flaring 10 years ahead of the 2030 United Nations deadline on flare out. According to him, Nigeria is about 70 per cent compliant on gas flare exit, and hopes to take away the other 30 per cent within the 2020 deadline.

Speaking on the gas policy, he said: “we are going to try and change our dynamics from being an oil producing country to being a gas producing country, because that is really what we are. Now we need to move from policies to directives.”

He reiterated that it was vital that “we get people back; we will define what the oil policy is, define what gas policy is, and people can have some predictability in terms of the business they are doing, and you begin to see a lot of them come back.”

The Minister also identified the downstream as an area requiring urgent attention, in which a directive had been is up and running by 2019.

He said many teams have been set up to deal with the issues, and there is a lot of financing interest, adding that “infrastructure is a major gap in the oil industry in Nigeria, so we need to think outside of the box.”

Regarding the upstream, Kachikwu said there are about three to four big projects where the final investment decisions (FIDS) have been taken without giving further details, adding that it was just a matter of finding the funding and getting going.

He said that from the perspective of the Nigerian petroleum policy, which is all embracing, “we showed the structures of the industry, we have shown the business models we are going to embrace to deal with environmental issues, that has been passed as far as up to the Council.”