The law provides the framework for regulation and the gradual elimination of gas flaring in the country.

This bill was signed into law on Augby former President Muhammadu Buhari. There is a framework in the Petroleum Industry Act 2021 for the regulation of the oil and gas industry in Nigeria. However, now that the government’s revenue is drying up, I suspect that it will be compelled to pay close attention to the issue. That is because the Federal Government does not pay serious attention to the matter since it has other sources of revenue. Some of the oil companies are said not to pay the fines as and when due. The fines are not huge enough to hurt them into doing something urgent to stop gas flaring. These fines represent a slap on the wrist of the oil companies or the equivalent of slapping them with loaves of bread. So, the question to ask is, why is this money called gas being burnt away for many years now? It is being burnt away because the Federal Government of Nigeria has been charging the defaulters peanuts as fines for several decades now. For the same period the volume of gas flared is equivalent to 4.9 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emission and has a power generation potential of 9, 200 gigawatts of electricity per hour. This amounted to an estimated N150 billion according to a report by the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA).įor the four months mentioned above, the international oil companies and other companies responsible for the flaring are expected to pay penalties amounting to $184.6 million (or about N85.7 billion).

In Nigeria, oil and gas companies flared about 92.3 million standard cubic feet mscf of gas between January and April this year. It is estimated that about 145 billion cubic metres of gas per year are being flared in oil and gas operations around the world. That is because gas flaring brings a lot of misery to those who live where the gas is flared. But it is a subject that has featured in the lives of some Nigerians since oil was discovered in 1956 in Nigeria. Even though it is a very important subject in economic terms it is not a subject that most people talk or write about.

Burn them all cooking fever