About $9.05 billion have been lost by Nigeria to gas flaring in the last ten years, a member of the House of Representatives, Hon. Ahmed Mohammed Munir (APC, Kaduna) has said.
Presenting a motion on the need to address the lingering issue of gas flaring by oil and gas companies in the country, Munir said the country already lost about N150 billion monetary to the incidence of gas flaring between January and April 2023.
Munit said there was a report by the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency, NOSDRA, which states that in 2022, Nigeria flared 216.5 billion standard cubic feet of gas in about eleven months despite its commitment in November 2021 to reach net zero by 2060.
According to him, the report states that 12 million tonnes of CO2 were emitted into the atmosphere, thus contributing to global warming while useful natural gas valued at $0.79 billion was burned by the Nigerian oil and gas industry equivalent to the value of $450 million, many of which were said not to have been collected.
He said further that in 2022 alone, 22,500 Gigawatts hours of potential power generation went to waste, equivalent to the annual electricity use of 511 million Nigerian citizens.
He expressed concern that in 2021, an estimated $761.19 million was lost to gas flaring, from where a total of N316.5 billion monetary value would have accrued to the government if it had captured this volume and repurposed it.
He said this sum would have helped the country provide basic amenities, as stated in the 2022 fiscal budget and would have financed the total expenditure for Primary Health Centres (PHCs), rural electrification projects, and the maintenance of all road and bridge projects by the Federal Roads Maintenance Agency (FERMA).
According to him, these have a collective figure of N227.13 billion. A breakdown shows that N24.4 billion was budgeted for PHCs, N113.96 billion for rural electrification, and N88.76 billion for FERMA.
He also expressed concern that “In 2023, the trend continues as 150 billion Naira value of gas was flared within the month of January to April 2023. In the last decade, approximately $9.05 billion has been lost to gas flaring. This money would have offset 23.62% of the country’s total foreign debt of $38.32 billion.
He stressed that in addition to wasting a valuable source of energy, gas flaring has a negative impact on human health, climate and the environment.
However, the House resolved to ask NOSDRA to provide the House with specified information on companies involved in gas flaring including the amount flared and penalty cost in the last decade for both local and international oil companies (IOCs) so that outstanding debts are fully recovered.
The House also asked key and relevant government agencies of the petroleum sector NNPCL, NOSDRA under the Ministry of Environment, NERC under the Ministry of Power to avoid working in silos and strengthen synergy to produce a practical and unified multi-level governance and policy coherence analysis that will stem gas flaring, protect the environment and boost energy supply