National Leader of the Strategic Union of Professionals for the Advancement of Nigeria, Mr. Martin Onovo, has called on the Federal Government to devise means to end gas flaring in the country.
His call came on the heels of a report by the Department of Petroleum Resources and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation that Nigeria lost N523 billion to gas flaring between 2015 and 2016.
The figures from the DPR show an N306bllion loss in 2015. Though he admitted that some gas utilisation programmes like NLNG in Bonny, NGL in Bonny by Exxon Mobil, and Escravos Gas Liquid Project are actually utilising a small fraction of the gas that is being produced in the country, he, however, frowned at the fact that none of the gas being flared can be used for power generation in Nigeria.
He said, “It is the same gas that turbines use and that is how the oil companies power themselves; they don’t depend on the nation’s power supply. If we had continued with the gas to power projects initiated by the former president Olusegun Obasanjo, may be by now, we would have reduced the power problem,” he said.
Onovo added that since the gas is associated with oil production, the government should plan effectively as there are so many uses the country can put the gas to, such as maintenance programme, power generation and natural liquefied gas.
“It is a matter of planning, because all the projects are being approved by the same government; but when non-professionals are in position of authority, there won’t be a solution because they don’t even know what the problem is in the first place,” he added.
