By Ediri Ejoh

OIL and gas companies flared over 31.68 billion standard cubic feet, SCF, of gas worth $95.04 million (N28.9 billion) in January, 2018, a slight decrease from the 31.88 billion SCF flared in the preceding month, December 2017.

Gas flaring

In its Monthly Financial and Operations Report for January 2018 released yesterday, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, noted that the volume of gas flared represented 12.51 percent of total gas produced by the oil and gas companies in the month under review.

Giving a breakdown of total gas utilization in the period under review, the report indicated that total domestic gas supply stood at 34.01 billion SCF, accounting for 13.53 percent of total gas supply in January 2018, with domestic gas-to-power and domestic gas-to-industry accounting for 22.66 billion SCF and 11.35 billion SCF respectively. In addition, the volume of gas exported in January 2018 rose by 10.78 percent to 110.18 billion SCF, compared to 99.46 billion SCF recorded in December 2017.

The report pointed out that 1.21 billion and 4.4 billion SCF of gas was exported through the West Africa Gas Pipeline and Escravos Gas to Liquid project respectively.

Also, it stated that Natural Gas Liquid/Liquefied Petroleum Gas export stood at 2.04 billion SCF, while 102.52 billion SCF of gas was exported through the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas, NLNG.

However, non-commercialised gas dropped by 9.72 percent from 99.41 billion SCF in December 2017 to 109.07 billion SCF in January 2018.

In the area of non-commercialised gas, the report explained that 66.48 billion SCF was re-injected; 10.92 billion was used as fuel gas, while 31.68 billion SCF of gas was flared. “This implies that 56.93 percent of the average daily gas produced was commercialized while the balance of 43.07 percent was re-injected, used as upstream fuel gas or flared. Gas flare rate was 12.51 percent for the month of January 2018.

‘’That is, 1.021 billion SCF per day, compared with average gas flare rate of 10.18 percent, that is, 780.15 million SCF per day, for the period January 2017 to January 2018.”

The report added that total gas supply for the period January 2017 to January 2018 stood at 3.045 trillion SCF, out of which 425.96 billion SCF and 1.338 billion SCF were commercialized for the domestic and export market respectively.