NNPC Targets Cut in Nigeria’s Global Gas Flares

Chineme Okafor

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) yesterday stated that it has devised a fresh three-pronged approach to end the practice of gas flare in oil fields across Nigeria, and subsequently move the country’s position from the world’s second highest gas flare nation to the seventh.

NNPC’s Group Managing Director, Dr. Maikanti Baru, stated this in a lead paper he delivered during a panel session at the ongoing 50th Offshore Technology Conference (OTC), in Houston, United States of America.

A statement on this was signed by the Group General Manager, Public Affairs of the NNPC, Mr. Ndu Ughamadu, and sent to THISDAY in Abuja.

Baru said the three-point strategy aimed at ending gas flaring in the country which the NNPC has developed, would ensure a sustainable solution to the historical problem of flaring, thereby turning waste into dollars.

He explained that in the last decade, gas flaring in Nigeria had reduced significantly from 25 per cent to 10 per cent.

According to him, the threepoint strategy championed by the NNPC to arrest the growth in gas flares include ensuring non-submission of Field Development Plans (FDPs) to the Department Petroleum Resources (DPR), without a viable and executable gas utilisation plan. This, he added would ensure that there are no new gas flare in current and future projects.

The other two strategies, Baru added, were a steady reduction of existing flares through a combination of targeted policy interventions in the gas masterplan as well as the re-invigoration of the flare penalty through the 2016 Nigeria Gas Flare Commercialisation Programme ( NGFCP) and through legislation, that is, ban on gas flaring through the recent flare gas prevention of waste and pollution regulations 2018.