Gas flaring’ll continue as far as no facility to exploit, says Owan

The major factor encouraging the continuous flaring of gas in Nigeria’s oil fields remains the inability of oil exploration firms to install infrastructure to harness gas in most of the oil fields in the country. This was the submission of former Chairman of the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), Mr. Ransome Owan at the just concluded Nigeria International Petroleum Summit (NIPS), in Abuja.

He berated the lack of commitment and political will on the side of the government and NNPC in particular to enforce installation of gas harnessing facilities as a precondition for any oil exploration by oil majors.

Owan further stated that gas flaring will remain a talkshop issue pending when the Federal Government moves away from the defeatist strategy of financial fines per cubic flared to stopping exploration in any
Though the NNPC agreed that there is lack of commitment on its part due to government’s weak political will on the matter.

He further indicted domestic gas buyers, especially the power sector for their snail speed in driving the needed speed in deepening gas utilisation in the country.

He also revealed that upon all policy statements and claims, Nigeria is yet to effectively utilise the West African Gas Pipeline to evacuate gas to Ghana and other countries along the pipeline, saying the weak attention to the sub-sector may derail ongoing plans to supply gas to Europe through the proposed Nigeria-Morocco gas pipeline project.

Only recently, Ghana sealed a fresh deal with Equatorial Guinea, avoiding Nigeria to supply gas to a number of rising power plants to drive electricity stability in key industrial regions of the country.

However, there are strong indications that the Federal Government is becoming serious in reawakening the zeal to end gas flaring through the commercialization process driven by Nigerian Gas Flare Commercialization Programme (NGFCP), Office of the Honorable Minister of State, Petroleum Resources, Federal Ministry of Petroleum Resources (MPR).

Program Manager of NGFCP, Justice Derefaka, in a terse statement issued Tuesday afternoon, revealed that government has approved fresh appointment into the Gas Flare Commercialization Programme as Engr. Rabiu Suleiman has been named new NGFCP Chairman.

Before his latest position, Suleiman had been the Group Executive Director (GED) NNPC/Senior Technical Adviser, Refineries, Gas, Power and Downstream Infrastructure in the office of the Honourable Minister of State for Petroleum Resources.