Nigeria loses $600 million annually due to under-reporting and unpaid penalties for gas flared and vented, according to a Stakeholders’ technical session on Accountability for Gas Flared and Clean Energy Advocacy (AGFACEA) with a coalition of 10 cluster members under the auspices of Advocacy for Gas Flared Accountability in Nigeria (AGFAN) with support from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and Palladium.
They criticized the meager punishments required to act as a deterrent against such behavior. Initiative for Community Development (ICD), which served as the cluster’s anchor, as well as ANPEZ Centre for Environment and Development, Capital Multimedia Limited (CML), the Community Initiative for Enhanced Peace and Development (CIEPD), and the Center for Transparency Advocacy are also members (CPA).
The Centre for Development Support Initiatives (CDSI), Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria (ERA/FoEN), the Entrepreneurial Development Initiative (ENDIP), Corporate Accountability and Public Participation Africa (CAPPA), and the Muma Foundation are additional organizations.
The forum, which took place in Lagos, noted that Nigerians face a dire situation in terms of their energy needs, with low-income earners, particularly women, now turning to firewood, charcoal, and sawdust to prepare meals because they can no longer afford cooking gas, Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG), and Dual Purpose Kerosene (DPK), also known as kerosene.
It regretted that the ample product has allegedly continued to be recklessly flared and vented in over 178 flare sites across the federation, mainly in the Niger Delta region, with all the ensuing environmental destruction, degradation, and pollution.
The program’s organizers noted that the advocacy was to improve transparency and accountability in flared and vented gas volumes, ensure penalty payment, as well as help the federal government achieve its goals. Other stakeholders in the program include the National Oil Spill Detection and Remediation Agency (NOSDRA), Nigerian Extractive Industry and Transparency Initiative (NEITI), Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC), and Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL).
Everest Nwankwo, a member of the AGFAN cluster under the auspices of Strengthening Civic Advocacy and Local Engagement (SCALE), lamented the lack of unified data on the actual volume of gas flared or vented, explaining that from the foregoing, a mechanism for peer review was necessary, not only to determine the precise amount of gas flared, but also to determine the proper penalty to be paid by defaulting companies.
At the technical session, which comprised representative of Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG), Ayedun Olarenwaju, Victor Eromosele of Centre for Petroleum Information, Dr. Olayinka Oyegbile of Development Works, Council of Renewable Energy’s Samuel Nwosu and petroleum geologist, Dr. Harry Thomas, NOSDRA representative, Dr. Mahmood Ibrahim, explained that over four billion cubic feet of gas (CFG) had been flared from 2012 till date, pointing out that flare tracker had revealed that heavy flaring was ongoing in OMLs 60, 61 and 63, among others.
In spite of the Independent Power Plant (IPP) in the Kwale-Okpai axis, he continued, gas is still flared and there are power outages in the region, particularly in Utagba Ogbe (Kwale), which is in Delta State’s Ndokwa West Council. He insisted that Nigeria would gain more from converting and maximizing its gas resources than from simply collecting fines for gas flaring and venting, which continue to be a waste of the nation’s resources.
Eromosele argued in his submission that Nigeria’s issue was delay and a lack of political will to pursue policies through to their logical conclusion and properly implement those that have been vetted. He claimed that as long as the nation continues to waste time on important issues, especially those concerning green and renewable energy, the country will continue to struggle as the rest of the world moves faster to adopt clean energy instead of fossil fuels and deplete dirty sources.
Nwosu asserts that Nigeria’s many overlapping policies must be harmonized, saying, “We need to think globally and act locally. The fact that we have too many policies is one of our issues.
In contrast, Oyegbile noted that policy influencers should put less emphasis on the future and focus on the present generation, particularly those who should have their energy needs met before making provisions for future generations. Oyegbile spoke solely from the perspective of journalism when discussing the provision of clean energy sources.
