WILL ZERO GAS FLARE BE ACHIEVED EVEN BY 2020?

Africa’s biggest crude exporter, Nigeria has been making frenetic efforts, setting and shifting deadlines to end gas flaring over the years. The country’s unsuccessful attempts to end the hazard, despite deadlines, dates back to 1969, when General Yakubu Gowon ordered oil companies to end gas flaring by 1974. After four decades, records from the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) indicate that the country is still flaring about 24 per cent of its 7.8 billion cubic feet gas wells production per day, worth an estimated $2.5 billion annually, due to lack of infrastructure to harness the gas.


Of concern, is the revelation by the international oil companies (IOCs), that they may continue to flare substantial amount of the gas resources in the country until 2020 which, according to them, is the feasible year for the flare out deadline.  The IOCs argue that it takes money to utilize this gas and the government needs to pay its own share of it since they are in joint ventures with government.

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