Three oil majors set to beat gas flaring deadline
THE Chairman of the Senate Committee on Gas, Senator Inatimi Spiff, has said that Chevron, Agip and Elf have confirmed that they will end gas flaring in the country by 2008.
Spiff said in Lagos on Thursday at a seminar on "National gas monitisation mandate: The journey so far" organised by the National Association of Energy Correspondents (NAEC) that "Chevron, Agip and Elf have given us their words that the 2008 deadline to stop gas flaring will be met and that the date for them is not negotiable."
Gas flaring has been an issue in Nigeria for over four decades, prompting the Federal Government to set 2008 as deadline for the oil companies to stop flaring. The flaring is often cited as the main cause of environmental hazards to residents of the oil-rich Niger Delta, where militants are currently locked in a war with government and the oil companies.
Spiff said that the gas sector was still grossly under-developed, calling on stakeholders in the sector to collaborate to harness the huge resources in the industry.
He lauded government for enacting legislation that had opened up the sector, saying that Nigeria had about 187 trillion cubic metres of gas to place it as the fifth nation with the largest gas reserve in the world.
The Director of the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR), Mr. Tony Chukwukere, frowned at the oil companies operating in the country of their inability to decrease their level of gas flaring in the last 10 years.
He said that government might adopt the option of closing down companies that failed to meet the 2008 deadline set for them to end gas flaring.
Chukwueke harped on the need to make the gas industry to be private sector-driven, saying that less than 20 per cent of the gas stock in the country was being utilised at present. "The DPR will be guided by the philosophy of transparency in its dealings with companies investing in the energy sector," he said.
He said that a unit had been created in the DPR solely charged with the task of finding ways to tap the country's huge gas resource.
