Upon NNPC claims, Nigeria flares more gas than recovered, commercialized—Data
Latest data from the review of monthly operations and financial reports of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) in 13 months has showed that Nigeria still flares more gas than recovered for use both for power generation firms and other industrial uses.
The latest figures showed that Nigeria flared 318.75 billion cubic feet (bcf) of gas and supplied only 291.67bcf to the power generating plants (Gencos), which signifies serious blow to earlier claims of the Corporation that gas flaring is coming down based on the new gas flare regulations.
With the data, it means that the claims by NNPC that gas flaring is dropping seriously and that the manufacturing sector will continue to get gas at a cheaper rate cannot stand the test of time.
Before the gas flaring report, statistics from the Advisory Power Team in the Office of the Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, has indicated that shortage of gas supply has remained a dominant constraint to optimum power production by generation companies (Gencos).
For instance, the Advisory Power Team stated that on February 4, 2019, the dominant constraint of the power sector was unavailability of gas which constrained a total of 1,720 megawatts (MW) of electricity from being available on the national grid. It equally said that on the average, 2,980MW of electricity could not be generated daily in January 2019 mostly on account of gas supply constraints.
Recently, industry analysts had criticized the new gas flaring regulation which they said failed to give determent commitments to firms known for chronic gas flaring in Niger Delta.
Experts say if between October 2017 and October 2018, 318.75 bcf of gas got flared by oil companies higher than the 291.67bcf utilised for electricity generation by 9.28 per cent, it means that Nigerians are not being told the truth on the entire gas flaring matter.
This is more so when it has become clear that the total gas flared was almost double the amount of gas supplied to industries, which according to the report was 174.04 bcf during the period under review.
