The Senate Committee on Gas has said the increase in gas flaring in Nigeria was caused as a result of weak laws in the gas sector of the economy and ministerial permissions.
The Chairman of the committee, Senator Albert Akpan, who made this known at the inaugural session of the committee on Wednesday, lamented that the mechanisms available to the government to curb irregularities in the gas sector were not being fully utilised.
Akpan also accused international oil companies of deliberately flouting various rules regulating the sector because the country was not enforcing its law guiding the gas sector of the economy.
In his words: “Despite the various policy regulating the sector, routine gas flaring still continues.
“Companies are even satisfied paying penalties and the mechanisms available to government to curb these irregularities are not fully utilized due to excessive ministerial permissions, limited regulation and the incontrovertible position of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation in the Joint Ventures.”
Senator Akpan promised that his committee must critically look into the economic, health and environmental degradation of the oil bearing communities caused by the continuous gas flaring in the country.
He said: “Strong and effective legal framework must be put in place and sanction enforced against erring multinational companies to act deterrence.
“The time to act is now.”
While noting that a recent report showed that there was an increase of about 36.8 per cent of cooking gas usage in Nigeria in the last three years, while over 80 percent of Nigeria household still relied on kerosene, firewood and other dangerous energy sources, the senator insisted that the committee would ensure that the Federal Government agenda of encouraging more Nigerians to embrace the usage of liquefied petroleum gas, seen to be clean, safe and affordable was achieved.
He added that the committee would explore legal and institutional frameworks for oil and gas operations in Nigeria towards devising a strategic document that will complement the existing gas policies and dynamic implementation of the gas master plan.
Responding to questions from reporters later on his assertion, Senator Akpan said: “For me, I think there’s an act of the National Assembly that was enacted in 2008, which is called the Nigerian Gas Supply and Pricing Act, 2008.
“That Act actually stipulates what the domestic gas supply obligation of every single international oil company operating on the soil of Nigeria is and that also stipulates the penalty on the issue of gas flaring.
“By the special grace of God, we will be engaging the various stakeholders from next week Tuesday.
“We will first of all talk to the regulators, the Ministry of Petroleum Resources, we will talk to NNPC, Department of Petroleum Resources and we will also talk to the gas aggregator.
“Let us first of all come to terms with the fact that there is a law guiding the gas sector and then begin to look at the areas where we can enforce the law because what we have found out here is that the law is not being enforced.
“One thing is to have a law, another thing is for you to ensure that every stakeholder, every operator adheres strictly to the conditions of the law.
“So, we will be looking at the law because this is an era of the rule of law.
“The President believes in the rule of law.
“The President believes that the oil and gas sector must be completely sanitised and that is what we are all here to do.
“We are going to carry out a very robust oversight and we will not compromise in terms of international best practices.”
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