Since crude oil was discovered in commercial quantities in Oloibiri in today’s Bayelsa State, gas flaring has been an intractable headache in the Niger Delta.

Mountains of studies and resolutions have attempted to get the International Oil Companies (IOCs) to comply with global standards to make oil exploration and production activities in Nigeria cleaner without success. Selfish and corrupt government officials  and the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), had, and are still ensuring that the oil companies defy all  efforts designed to discipline them in the national interest. This is why many deadlines have been set for the end of gas flaring in Nigeria without success.

Today, what we have is not just gas flaring; “dollar flaring” has joined our oil and energy industry woes. The combination of the Federal Ministry of Power, the power Generation Companies (GENCOs) and Distribution Companies (DISCOs) is now forcing Nigerians to flare dollars due to the worsening power supply situation. Given the total failure of government to revive our four refineries, we are almost totally dependent on the importation of fuels – petrol, diesel and kerosene. That means  we are sending back the bulk of the dollars which we earn through crude oil exports.

In the last three months,  power supply per day had plummeted to abysmal levels – forcing us to use more fuel to fire our generators. A recent media survey indicated that power generation, which averaged 4,000 megawatts a couple of months ago, nosedived below 3,000 megawatts at the onset of the dry season.

Consequently, every minute we fire our generators, what we are doing is setting fire to the dollars used in procuring the fuel. And as the power supply dwindles, we are forced to set fire to more dollars used in procuring the fuel.

As we all know, the major cause of our exchange rate and interest rate problems is dollar scarcity. The question for the Federal Government is: how can we accumulate sufficient foreign exchange when every hour of the day, we are setting fire to the little we have by operating generators twelve or more hours per day?

With gas flaring, Nigeria never collected the money. With “dollar flaring”, we are setting fire to the little we have. For how long will  this go on?

Our only hope, for now, is the proposed Dangote Refinery, which is expected to come on stream in a couple of years, since our old government refineries are almost unserviceable.

We must build more local refineries and work harder at stabilising the Niger Delta in order to conserve scarce foreign exchange now being wasted on fuel imports. Otherwise, there’ll be no end ln sight to the fall of the Naira – and carbon-linked atmospheric pollution.