Discrepancies trail exact gas flare sites as NGFCP says 178, NSIA claims 300
Fresh confusion of exact number of gas flare sites in Nigeria has emerged following new claims of the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA) that Niger Delta is currently bugged with over 300 gas flare sites.
Latest report on Nigeria gas flare records shows that oil companies in Nigeria produce over 4 billion standard cubic feet (scf) of gas daily, of which about 700 million scf are wasted through flaring due to dearth of gas gathering infrastructure and lack of funding to invest in such ventures.
The claims of the Authority contradict that of the Nigeria Gas Flare Commercialization Programme (NGFCP) which has put the record as 178 sites.
Recall that NGFCP, under the Ministry of Petroleum Resources, has in the last few months been driving a new scheme that will lead to the commercialization of the sites for gas capturing and processing for either domestic use of exports.
Giving update in Lagos recently, the Program Manager of NGFCP, Mr. Justice Derefaka, said through the steering committee of the NGFCP, Federal Government has commenced prequalification checks on over 250 companies that have submitted bids for the 178 gas flare sites across the oil producing fields in the oil states.
For record sake, it would be recalled that NGFCP was launched by the former Minister, Dr Ibe Kachukwu, on December 13, 2016 to drive the policy objectives of the government for the elimination of gas flares which is designed to drive multiplier effects.
The Steering Committee of NGFCP, chaired by Engr. Rabiu Suleiman, is made up of members from the Ministry, NNPC, DPR and NEITI.
In his remarks recently, Engr. Suleiman noted that the major target of the government in driving NGFCP is to end gas flaring by 2020.
But the weekend claim by the Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer, NSIA, Uche Orji, in Lagos weekend that “From my last count, there are more than 300 major gas flare sights in Nigeria,” has raised a serious concern on whose data to believe as far as gas flaring site statistics are concerned.
Even as NGFCP has stepped up the process of Nigeria’s gas flare commercialization, the yet to be revealed programme of NSIA may as well, become duplication and clash of tailored programmes in harnessing flared gases by the same government.
This is deduced from the comments of NSIA boss that “The project we’re about to execute, we plan to announce it before the end of this year; we’re close to announcing it much earlier than that. It’s a project we’re working with other partners, I don’t want to disclose them at this stage, but we’re taking one of the largest onshore gas flare sight, and turning it into liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) capture. We will take out the non-gas liquids C1 and C2, and turn them to LPG, then take the C1, C2 and send them to power plants”.
Orji, however argued that it is because the NGFCP had not yielded the desired result, that the NSIA is stepping in not only to boost the internal rate of return (IRR) by at least 19 per cent through the gas-LPG, and Gas-to-power programmes, but also earn carbon credits by selling carbon credit in Switzerland, that will shoot IRR up to above 25 per cent.
In his further submission, NSIA boss averred that “The NSIA intervention became imperative, seeing as, “the economic waste is mind-blowing… The ultimate reason we are looking at LPG is this; the biggest challenge we’re facing and part of the reasons we have conflicts, is climate change and deforestation. You see people they fell trees, burn them and sell the charcoal. Beyond the deforestation for charcoal export, are actually people cutting trees for plywood, which is why we want to boost LPG usage in Nigeria.”
