Senate urges FG to intensify efforts to diversify from crude oil to natural gas production

The Senate on Wednesday urged the Federal Government to intensify efforts to diversify from crude oil to natural gas production.
The call by the Senate followed the adoption of a motion at Plenary on the need to monitor the Nigerian Flare Commercialisation Programme towards ending Gas Flaring by 2020.
The motion was sponsored by Senator Betty Apiafi and co-sponsored by 47 other senators.
Apiafi, while presenting her motion at the plenary, noted that gas flaring is the burning of natural gas that is associated with the extraction of crude oil.
She said that the data obtained from the World Bank Global Gas Flaring Reduction Partnership in 2018nindicated that Nigeria was the sixth largest gas flaring country globally and the second largest in Africa after Algeria.
She said that there were long standing laws against the flaring of associated natural gas in Nigeria which action had been deemed illegal since 1984.
“Section 3(1) of the Associated Gas Re-injection Act, CAP A25 LFN 2004 states that no company engaged in the production of oil and gas shall after January 1, 1984 flare gas produced in association with or without the permission in writing of the minister,” she said.
She said it was a concern about the huge revenue loss due to unrelenting gas flares in the country.
Apiafi said flaring of associated natural gas was simply burning of money.
“In 2018 alone, according to data obtained from the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, Oil and gas firms operating in the country flared a total of 215.9 billion standard cubic feet  of natural gas amounting to a revenue loss of more than N197 billion .
She noted that Nigeria has the largest natural gas reserve in Africa and ninth largest in the world.
She said the Niger Delta region gas flares had been wreaking havoc across communities since the early 1960s.
Apiafi said the emission was also affecting the economy and the environment.
She said the failure of the government to enforce laws against gas flaring had exposed people living around nearby flare sites to various environmental disorders.
This, she said, had cost the country trillions of naira in revenues.
She noted that natural gas, when harnessed properly was a source of energy for heating, cooking, electricity generation, fuel for vehicles and chemical feedstock for the manufacture of commercially important organic chemicals.