Nwadishi: Nigeria Can Generate $2bn Annually from Flared Gas
At the recent World Bank/International Monetary Fund (IMF) Springs Summit held in Washington, D.C., United States of America, a global initiative on how to combine forces to end routine gas flaring was launched. One of the guest speakers and the National
When was the fight to end gas flaring in Nigeria started by your organisation? I live in the Niger Delta and it is something that I grew up with. It is something that is associated with oil exploration which started in the late 50s, and for every oil exploration gas that comes with it. As hazardous it looks like, most companies feel that keeping the gas is a threat to their infrastructure and they prefer and believe it is cheaper to flare it. In 1979, Nigeria promulgated a law called ‘Gas Rejection Act’. In that law, it was agreed that gas flaring would end by December 30, 2004. Unfortunately, the parliament has shifted it and the last one was 2012.
This is 2015 and it seems there is no end in sight to gas flaring. In 2014, the Ministry of the Environment launched the Gas Flare Tracker to monitor gas flaring sites and the volume of gas flared in those areas. It has been established that the volume of gas being flared in Nigeria can translate to two billion dollars in revenue annually. Apart from that, Nigeria flares 40 per cent of total gas flare in Africa which means it is the highest in Africa and second in the world after Russia.
So if you go to an active gas flare site, you wouldn’t even want to come close because of the heat and the other issues around it. Like in my state in Delta, the people like to eat dry garri and fish. The women go out there to dry their garri and fish without considering the health implications. So the issue of gas flaring goes beyond the amount of money that can be saved or how much money people can get out of it for business. We really have to realise the fact that government are not sensitive to the plight of people who live in active gas flare sites. I was invited to speak about it because gas flaring is something that I am passionate about because of where I come from. During your speech you talked about translating the endorsement into action. How do you think this can be achieved? Well, putting this endorsement into action is very crucial because there have been many endorsements in the past. Companies want to sign and look good in the face of international community, developing countries also want to sign because it is an internationally led initiative, and they want to also look good in the face so that their foreign aid will be good. But when it comes back to the real sense of it, the commitment, political will and capacity to implement it is not there.
We have a lot of initiatives, for instance, I represent African civil societies on the EITI international board. Nigeria is one of the EITI implementers. Most of the companies you see here have endorsed EITI, but a lot of them have cases in court where they are challenging countries that have legislations that will make such things work within their countries of operation. That for me is a double faced commitment to it.
We want to see people who sign on to end gas flare actually committing to it. It is a good thing that all the companies that spoke here work in Nigeria, and they have active gas flare sites in Nigeria. That is the irony of it. I want to see a situation whereby, when they leave this meeting, and next week I begin to see their gas flare sites being shut down because they have signed up on this endorsement.
A lot of work has already been done in Nigeria by government, but they need to give it a lot more force than before. For instance, last year, the Ministry of the Environment launched the gas flare tracking that you can get to on the website. But the Nigerian government has to take the lead on that. For instance, there is a judgment that declared gas flare illegal. We need the National Assembly to pass the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) because checks on gas flaring are contained in there; we need also to be committed to ending gas flaring and not shifting the goal post. From the 1979 law, they were supposed to have stopped gas flaring by 2004 but they kept shifting the goal post until 2012 December and until now there is no specific date to end it. And they always give one reason or the other and this is not acceptable.
Globally, we heard Norway saying that from the very first time they started exploring oil they decided to end gad flaring. But we have Statoil that is from Norway, which has come out to say this is what they are doing in their country, but they are not doing the same thing in Nigeria. Also, we have heard companies like Shell and Eni speak about wonderful things they are doing in the US, but nobody talks about what they are doing in Africa. They need to take this commitment a little step further and demonstrate that they are serious about what they signed up on. This is not the time for just mere rhetoric; action is needed in this regard. How has your organisation’s involvement helped in raising the needed awareness on this issue? Well, it is unfortunate that Nigeria has not sighed into the Zero Gas Flaring Initiative. From all the campaigns, I think Nigeria should lead herself and other African countries into this process. We don’t have to wait for the international communities to push things for us; we ought to be in the forefront and get the world to support us. It is a good initiative and we want the Nigerian government to buy into it. There is no amount of money or fine that could augment the level of destruction being visited on the Niger Delta region. In your own view, how do you think Nigeria government can be lured into this process, considering the fact that other countries are now combining forces to end routine gas flaring? It is about sincerity. I don’t think government should be lured or persuaded as a force to end routine gas flaring because it is a fundamental human right and any government should be concerned about the welfare of her citizenry. It translates to protecting the goose that lays the golden egg.
“We need the National Assembly to pass the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) because checks on gas flaring are contained in there; we need also to be committed to ending gas flaring and not shifting the goal post. From the 1979 law, they were supposed to have stopped gas flaring by 2004 but they kept shifting the goal post until 2012 December and until now there is no specific date to end it. And they always give one reason or the other and this is not acceptable”