Gas flaring palaver: Senate to the rescue?

By EMMANUEL AZIKEN, Abuja
NIGERIA’S poor utilisation of domestic gas despite its wide availability in the country is perhaps one of the indices of poor governance in the country.

Gas Pipeline

In the abundance of much gas useful for both domestic and industrial purposes, the country unfortunately continues to flare most of the gas arising from oil production thereby polluting the environment. As much as two billion cubic standard feet of gas (2b scf) of associated gas arising from oil exploration is flared every day in the country. Whereas the flared gas could have been gathered for either domestic or industrial purposes yielding much revenue to the country, oil producers have continued to flare the associated gas partly because of the lax fiscal and environmental costs.

With the country now getting wise on the financial and environmental costs of gas flaring, several initiatives to put an end to the glaring abuse of its gas resources are being considered. One of the initiatives is the mobilisation of gas from oil production in the form of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) for domestic use as cooking gas.

Despite having double the population size of all the other countries in the West African sub-region, Nigeria is reckoned to be the least consumer nation of LPG. As a practical demonstration of its readiness to reverse the trend, the Senate Committee on Gas, in conjunction with major stakeholders, is embarking on a major initiative to promote the utilisation of cooking gas in the country. The initiative in the form of an LPG summit in Abuja is aimed at identifying, among others, challenges militating against the use of LPG in the country’s urban and rural communities.

The two-day summit holding between October 12 and 13 is being organised in collaboration with some major stakeholders in the sector including the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR), the Federal Ministry of Petroleum Resources and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).

The summit has, as its target audience, producers, suppliers and distributors of LPG, banks active in oil and gas financing, poverty alleviation agencies and non-governmental organisations with community based objectives. Other expected participants include state commissioners for local government, rural development and women affairs, local government chairmen and multilateral agencies.

The summit should focus on promoting and expanding consumption of LPG in homes as cooking gas and in cars as fuel, thereby killing two birds with one stone. It is expected that the consumption of gas would help Nigeria meet its commitment to the Kyoto protocol on climate change as it would reduce the amount of gas flared by the oil companies and reduce the trees felled by rural dwellers for cooking. Besides, it is readily said that gas is a better form of fuel for motor vehicles and would also preserve the life of motor vehicles more than petrol fueled engines. The fresh Senate initiative is despite its passage of a bill to prohibit flaring of gas by the end of 2010 from the estimated 150 flaring sites in the Niger Delta.

The initiative, according to Sunday Vanguard sources, also aims to introduce third party access to gas utilisation in a scheme that would allow third parties access to gas that would otherwise have been flared by oil producing countries. The gas could be obtained at the point of flare.

Such third parties, it is
envisaged, would be
able to harness the gas as LPG or cooking gas for domestic utilisation. “The findings of the recent events/hearing organised by the Senate on gas flaring have made it imperative that we make visible and sustained effort to break out from the vicious cycle and challenge posed by gas wastage, severely detrimental to health, the environment and the economy,” a source in the Senate Committee on Gas revealed. “The Senate has, therefore, resolved to fast track the process leading to a comprehensive legal and regulatory framework.”
The impact of gas flaring has been repeatedly cited as a major contributor to the degradation of the environment in the Niger Delta and as a major cause of ill-health in the region. Gas flaring is also regarded as a menace in the region. “Over fifty years after the commencement of oil and gas operations in the country, 2.5b scf, representing over 80 percent of produced associated gas is still flared every day even with the juicy incentives from the Federal Government of Nigeria. This has contributed more greenhouse gases to the earth’s atmosphere than all other sources in sub-Saharan Africa combined,” a committee source disclosed. “As such, it is a serious but unnecessary contributor to climate change, the impact of which is already being felt in various ways namely food insecurity, increasing risk of disease, the rising costs of extreme weather damage, over 14 million people dying yearly of smoke related causes in Africa. Yet this flared gas could be harnessed and used as fuel.”
Against this background, the committee, it was gathered, intends to maximize the potentials inherent in the usage of cooking gas. The aim apparently is to encourage rural dwellers to prefer cooking with gas rather than with firewood. The import of the committee’s initiative would also aim to stop the spread of deforestation in the North which is now said to be fanned by gas flaring in the Niger Delta. The executive director of Environmental Rights Action (ERA), Rev. Ninmo Bassey, at a media workshop in Port-Harcourt, last month, had warned of the spread of the environmental consequences of gas flaring saying that “the effects of the flaring are spreading to all states of the Niger Delta region, the effects will not leave out the Northern part as deforestation is raging to the Northern states.” At a media briefing heralding the gas summit, Senator Osita Izunaso, chairman, Senate Committee on Gas, had disclosed the committee’s determination to revolutionise utilisation of cooking gas among rural dwellers and low income urban dwellers through the annual production of 500,000 low capacity 3kg gas cylinders at reasonable prices.

The scheme to introduce more
potable gas cylinders
alongside millions of the standard 12.5 kg cylinders, he said, is part of the scheme of the Senate Committee on Gas to lift Nigeria’s poor utilisation of cooking gas despite its wide availability. Izunaso, who was flanked by committee members including  senators Tawar Wada (PDP, Gombe South), Kabiru Jibril (PDP, Kaduna Central) and George Sekibo (PDP, Rivers), at the media briefing, last Monday, said:   “The Committee has decided to have a critical view of how best the natural gas resource the country is endowed with can be tapped into for the benefit of the people, at the same time saving the government the foreign exchange expended on importing kerosene.
“The core thrust of this summit is to identify the challenges militating against the use of LPG among our urban and rural communities, to identify LPG equipment that is affordable and accessible to the rural communities in Nigeria, to locate the appropriate supply and price mechanism that will encourage the use of LPG among our rural dwellers and to promote the usage of LPG as an alternative source for cooking as against kerosene, charcoal etc among our urban and rural communities.”
Izunaso said that the summit will involve stakeholders from the Ministry of Petroleum, the department of petroleum resources, commissioners of women affairs, local government chairmen, major producers/suppliers of LPG, and other stakeholders in the sector would look at ways to improve gas consumption to one million metric tons within the next five years. His words, “The summit should be able to come up with the road maps with stakeholders on the following areas, how to ensure the possibilities of achieving one million metric tons consumption of LPG in the next five years, ensuring the provision of million 12.5kg cylinders or more annually, ensuring the provision of 500, 000 (6kg) or more cylinders with burners annually, and assuring an uninterrupted supply of LPG to the domestic market at a reasonable price.”