THE REAL COST OF GAS FLARING

The proposal to end wasteful and ruinous gas flaring is welcome

The disclosure by the German Ambassador to Nigeria and ECOWAS, Annett Günther, that Nigeria lost an estimated $1.5 billion to gas flaring in 2024 is indicative of the magnitude of the challenge. “Just for context, 5.3 billion cubic meters of gas was flared in 2024 in Nigeria which makes it the seventh rank in the world and that equals an economic loss of US$1.5 billion,” the envoy said while harping on a new partnership with her country to address the issue. “So, this new programme now is to work together and find out how to utilise those flare gases more efficiently, bring down emissions, generate additional value, and use the gas to supply households and industry or even maybe to produce hydrogen.”

We endorse the German proposal with the hope that the federal government will work to end this menace that has gone on for several decades. In the first half of 2024 alone, an estimated 148.7 million standard cubic feet of gas were flared in Nigeria, according to the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA). It is not lost on experts that we fritter away an amount that could have provided much-needed relief to Nigeria’s ongoing foreign exchange woes. Besides, according to experts, this amount of wasted gas has the potential to generate approximately enough electricity to power most of the country. This, despite that gas flaring is against Nigerian law.

Whereas Nigeria has over the decades reaped huge revenue from oil, the converse side of it is that gas flaring, a concomitant effect of exploration activities, does a lot of damage to the environment. It involves burning gas released by oil extraction—which sends plumes of toxic smoke into the air. It has been established beyond reasonable doubts that gas flaring endangers human health, harms local ecosystems, emits large amounts of greenhouse gases and wastes vast quantities of natural gas. Unfortunately, oil companies in Nigeria, without any exception, have continued to engage in indiscriminate flaring of gas.

Dating from the first day oil was extracted in Oloibiri in the Niger Delta, gas flaring has continued unabated and with impunity. Sadly, human beings live next door to the roaring, ground level flares some of which go up as high as a multi-storey building, emitting black clouds of toxic smoke. In fact, environmental activists have attributed gas flaring to health hazards and medical conditions like cancer, asthma, chronic bronchitis, blood disorders, and other diseases. These health problems affect the people of oil-producing communities. Other health hazards arising from gas flaring include the fact that it causes acid rain with its negative impact on the soil, leading to reduced crop yields. It equally does harm to the ecosystem, damaging flora and fauna, just as pollution of sea waters leads to decline in fish population. The litany of woes caused by gas flaring continues with serious consequences for the well-being of the nation and its people.

This damage to man and the environment in the oil producing areas has continued just because successive national governments have failed to take decisive action on the matter. In 1969, the administration of General Yakubu Gowon set the first deadline that within five years of business, an operating oil company must cease flaring gas. All the military administrations that followed also set deadlines for oil companies to end gas flaring in the country, but the deadlines came and passed just as the harmful activity continued.

Under the current civilian dispensation, the federal government approved the Nigerian Gas Flare Commercialisation Programme (NGFCP) in December 2016. But a decade after, not much has been achieved. Yet Nigeria is a signatory to the Global Gas Flaring Reduction Partnership (GGFR) principles for global flare-out by 2030.