As Nigeria increases gas flare penalty to $2 in a bid to end the many years of environmental pollution of oil communities and meet up with the United Nations target on zero gas flare, the Nigeria National Petroleum Company Limited , International Oil Companies and other operators are getting smarter under a weak regulator and revenue agencies as companies under-report gas flaring and evade fines.
Nigeria has the largest gas reserves in Africa, hovering around 208 trillion standard cubic feet. The ‘2022 Global Gas Flaring Tracker Report’ of the World Bank showed that Nigeria ranked seventh on the list of top 10 countries worldwide involved in gas flaring in 2021.
Before the fine was imposed, the figure from the self-reported data by oil companies was almost similar only for the discrepancies in the figure to consistently widen afterwards. In 2020, it was 193 bscf against 353 bscf respectively and 138 bscf against 260 bscf respectively. These brought the figures of dateline reporting through the GFT 1.5 trillion standard cubic feet of gas in four years while self reporting of flared gas stood at 857 bscf.The 692 billion standard cubic feet of gas not reported by the oil companies amounted to $1,384,000,000 in penalty. Recall that the current gas flare penalty stands at about $2 for every 1,000 cubic feet of gas flared.
A 300 MMscfd Capacity Kwale Gas Gathering and injection facility located in the Umusam Community, near Kwale in Delta State is expected to come on stream next year. According to the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, NLNG, Dr Philip Mshelbila, LPG grew from 60,000MT in 2007 to over 1.3million metric tons in 2021, a growth of over 1,000 per cent. The development is witnessing gradual reduction in the consumption pattern of non-environmental friendly fuels like biomass, premium motor spirit, diesel and kerosene.Nigeria, especially the Niger Delta region is at the receiving end of global warming.
A research, titled ‘Exposure to Oil Pollution and Maternal Outcomes: The Niger Delta Perspective Cohort Study,’ and published on National Centre for Biotechnology Information shows that gas flaring impacts babies in the womb and their mothers. The research had examined 23,487 live births to women living within the Eagle Ford region, where gas is flared like communities in Niger Delta between 2012 to 2015. The study found premature birth of 14 per cent.