Taiwo Hassan 
Nigeria can prevent the N891 billion gas flare losses it has suffered by adopting some measures including making gas flare expensive through appropriate punitive measures against oil companies. The Federal Government can also adopt appropriate measures to encourage investment in Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) as this will enhance CNG usage and penetration in the country, which will mitigate the high cost of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) otherwise called petrol or fuel.
Nigeria had lost N891 billion to gas flaring in 18 months in 2021 and 2022, the Nigerian Oil Spill Monitor, an arm of the Nigerian Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency, NOSDRA, said on Sunday. According to the data from the agency, Nigeria lost a total of N707 billion in 2021 and N184 billion in the first six months of 2022. The losses for the 18 months totalled N891 billion. The report further revealed that about 23,862.271 barrels of oil (3,770,238.864 litres/119 tanker trucks) were spilled in 2021.
It further disclosed that oil and gas companies operating in Nige- ria flared a total of 126 billion standard cubic feet, SCF, of gas in the first half of 2022, leading to a loss of $441.2 million, (about N183.54 bn) in the six-month period. A former President of the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN), Peter Esele, said it was sad that Nigeria was losing such money revenue as a result of the gas flare. In an interview with New Tele- graph over the weekend, he cautioned against such losses, more so, as the country dearly needed the revenue to address its high debt profile, infrastructural deficit and other developmental challenges.
He also advised the FG to make gas flare expensive and make gas capture cheap. Esele said: “If we are to look at the economic aspect of it, a poor country like Nigeria should not be wasting anything. We should be able to use everything we have. “I will advise the government to make it expensive to flare gas. When you make it expensive to flare gas, and then make it cheap- er to invest in compressed natural gas.
“Government can make it ex- pensive to flare gas and cheaper to capture gas because once you capture gas and make it cheaper, you help people to invest in that sector and then people start investing in it. “So we can now use gas to power our vehicles. It becomes now easy for investors to want to invest in that particular aspect of our economy. Nigeria has more gas than crude oil. So we are a gas-rich nation. What we have not done is that we have not opened it up for investment. So because of the fact that we have made gas flaring very cheap to IOCs and producers, so they would just go ahead.”
He added: “Each of these com- panies who are gas producers, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) Gas Nigeria has a certain percentage of it. “So any payment you are paying, the Nigerian government is also paying. So the Nigerian government needs to fix it. NNPCL is now a lim- ited liability company. “We need to hold NNPCL respon- sible and we now set a timeline. I am old enough in this country to know that we have always set a timeline to end gas flaring but we have never had the discipline to follow through and actually end it. “The key to the solution for gas flaring is to make gas flaring expen- sive and make gas capture cheaper.”
Esele, who is a former President of the Trade Union Congress of Nigeria (TUC), urged the FG to encourage investment in CNG, noting that CNG penetration would enable Nigerians who are facing the high cost of petrol to transit to CNG usage. He stated that the Federal Government under the past ad- ministrations failed to encour- age investment in CNG, adding that if they had encouraged the investments, the petrol subsidy removal would have been seam- less and Nigerians would not have suffered the sudden shock and spike in the cost of petrol after full deregulation. Esele said: “Converting to CNG is the in-thing given the high cost of petrol as a result of subsidy removal. This is something we should have done long ago. But successive governments did not have the foresight to in- vest in CNG even when it was ap- parent that the petrol subsidy was going to go one day.
“There is a road map for gap penetration in the country in the Ministry of Petroleum. But has anybody followed that road map through? No!. “Muhammadu Buhari was President for eight years. If we had invested much money in CNG in the last eight years and the subsidy is taken away, the pain of over N500 and N488 of per litre of petrol in Lagos would have been reduced. But right now, gradually, we are seeing that the investment in CNG is expanding by the day even though not growing as fast as one will expect. “Governments should be ready to give a grant or single- digit loan to make it easier for investors to invest in that sec- tor. That is for me one thing that can be done going forward. The government’s responsibility is to create a good environment for people to bring in their money and make money. Businessmen will not drop money where they know they will not make a profit.”
“So make it easy to come into that sector and know that they will make a profit and that way, they will be finding a solu- tion to our problem. Once you are able to find a solution to our problem, people make a profit. That is key. “You can give an interest- free loan. The American gov- ernment has powered Elon Musk, Chief Executive Officer, (CEO) and Product Architect of Tesla, to produce more elec- tric cars. The government has given him $4.5 billion as a sub- sidy to Elon Musk because the govenrment is planning that they want electric cars all over America and they are planning for a clean environment.
