Oil and gas companies in Nigeria flared 138.7 million metric standard cubic feet of gas in the first half (H1) of 2023, the Nigerian Oil Spill Monitor, an arm of the Nigerian Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency, (NOSDRA) has said.
According to the NOSDRA report sighted by New Telegraph on Monday, this is about a 10% rise from 126.1 million standard cubic feet (SCF) of gas from January to June 2022.
This resulted in 7.4 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions which converted at a rate of US$485.3m, which translates to an equivalent of N373bn lost (using the Investor & Exporter (I&E) window rate).
This is in comparison with 6.7m tonnes of CO2 emissions for US$441.2m, which translated to an equivalent of N338bn lost in H1 2022.
It could be recalled that the World Bank’s Global Gas Flaring Reduction Partnership (GGFR) in its 2022 global gas flaring tracker report ranked Nigeria as the 7th among the top nine largest gas flaring countries globally in 2022.
Based on the satellite data, about 139 billion cubic meters (bcm) equivalent of c.4.9tn standard cubic feet of gas was flared at upstream oil and gas facilities across the globe in 2022, resulting in 382.4 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalent emissions with an equivalent amount of US$16.5bn lost. Both the NOSDRA data and the World Bank report, Nigeria lost potential income of between US$761.2m and US$893.1m to gas flaring in 2022.
Specifically for Nigeria, data from the World Bank was broadly in line with data from Nigerian Oil Spill Monitor above. Gas flaring in Nigeria has been a great problem, especially in the Niger Delta region comprising Rivers, Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, and Imo States) since the commercial exploration of crude oil started in Nigeria.
The Federal Government has on several occasions set a target to end gas flaring, which has all been missed, with the most recent unmet deadline in the year 2020.
source:https://newtelegraphng.com/