“From January 1, 2008, government will impose fines on operators that still flare gas and from December 31, 2008, the oilfields of defaulting operators will be shut.” This was a directive from the Nigerian government,reported on AfricanLoft on December 5, 2007, via Reuters.

Today is January 2008, 14 days after the deadline, and gas is being flared all over the Niger Delta; business continues as usual, and the government that issued the deadline is silent.

What the Nigerian government accomplished by issuing an order that can’t be enforced is simply showing itself as a toothless dog fettered by oil companies.

Excerpts from IPS News: NIGERIA: Inefficient Gas Flaring Remains Unchecked:

Responding to pressure from oil companies, the Nigerian government pushed the deadline back on Jan. 6. A press statement issued by Levi Ajuonuma, group general manager of public affairs for the state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), announced a shift of deadline from December 2007 to December 2008.

Since as far back as 1979, multinational oil companies have been successful in coercing the government to push back the deadlines it sets to stop gas flaring. The oil industry accounts for more than 90 percent of Nigeria’s export earnings…

The gas, a by-product of oil exploitation, is being burnt off because oil companies neither utilize nor recycle it. NNPC says that about 40 percent of gas produced in the country — almost 23 billion cubic metres — is burned annually.

The World Bank estimates that Nigeria loses about 2.5 billion dollars annually to gas flare.

Some of the largest multinational oil companies in the world — including the U.K. and Dutch owned Shell, the French company Total, and the American companies Mobil and Chevron — are responsible for the bulk of the scores of gas flares burning in Nigeria.

There are no surprises here. Oil companies won’t wake up overnight and stop flaring! It is cheap to burn to the gas.

Water and natural gas are two materials associated with oil drilling. While water can easily be managed and eliminated, flaring is the cheapest means of managing the drilling process and ensuring oil continues to flow without incurring high capital cost the processing of the natural gas requires. The oil company are just flowing simple economic sense, period.

It is not enough for the government to issue policy statements that lack any practical or economic sense.

The flared gas in Nigeria has been estimated to be in quantities large enough to power the whole of Africa - yet power generation is at an abysmal level of 3000MW, insufficient to power New York city!

Natural gas can be channeled for other uses in addition to driving gas turbine for electric power stations or domestic cooking; they can be used as compressed natural gas to power vehicles to substitute gasoline (petrol). This is being done in Mexico, India, Singapore, America and several Scandinavian countries.

These are the sort of capacities the Nigerian government needs to explore and build to divert the gas being flared into better and economic uses. This requires some will, serious work and planning; issuing blank policy statements is not going to cut it.

Nigeria flares the largest quantity of gas in the world, worth $2-3 billion dollars annually.

Related item: Element: Ifie and Tina - a documentary of the burden of oil in the Niger-Delta

Submitted and written by Yinka of Lagos.