Focus on the environmental impact of gas flaring

The most outstanding sight in the tiny fishing village of Batan in southern Nigeria, is a 10-metre-high flame that burns continuously from a vertical pipe at the edge of one of the many facilities the Shell oil company has in the Niger Delta. The flame pales in bright sunlight, but at night its orange glow dominates the village and surrounding skies over a 15-kilometre radius. It is fed by the natural gas given off during the production of crude oil, and which is burnt away as waste. "Batan has known no darkness since Shell set up in the place more than 10 years ago," Dan Orubebe, a Niger Delta activist and community member, told IRIN in Lagos. "The surrounding vegetation has withered while the health of the inhabitants has deteriorated." More than a thousand such flares burn in and off the Niger Delta, a 70,000-sq.km region that produces much of Nigeria's oil, and where natural gas has been going up in flames ever since oil production began 40 years ago in the West African country. Each day up to 2.7 billion cubic feet - about 70 percent - of the gas released during oil production is burned off in Nigeria. This sends huge volumes of greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide and methane, into the atmosphere, while sulphur dioxide emissions come back to the Delta as acid rain. Inhabitants of the region complain of health problems - mainly respiratory - as well as damage to wildlife, homes and vegetation. Known reserves of natural gas in Nigeria are estimated at over 180 trillion cubic feet, which is enough, some experts say, to power the rest of Africa for centuries. Potential reserves are estimated at between 45 trillion and 100 trillion cubic feet. However, in the past four decades alone, the country's oilfields have produced about 23 trillion cubic feet of gas, most of which has been flared. Over the years, oil companies operating in Nigeria, which include Shell, Exxon-Mobil, Chevron, Totalfina-Elf, Agip and Texaco, have invoked several factors for not exploiting the gas. These include lack of local and regional demand, absence of infrastructure for distribution, and the high cost of investments required to take the gas to international markets. Initially, the government's effort to tackle the problem of flaring was limited to a token tax of about 15 US cents per 1,000 cubic feet of gas flared - too light to serve as a deterrent - and the practice continued. "Current statistics indicate that Nigeria accounts for about 19 percent of the total amount of gas flared globally," Minister of State for Environment Ime Okopido told a recent seminar in Lagos. "Nigeria, as a nation, recognises the realities of large-scale flaring of natural gas and the associated impacts." Indeed, the Niger Delta, as a coastal area, is among the places most likely to become vulnerable to the effects of global warming. Of particular concern, Okopido said, is the likely impact of rising sea levels, such as tidal waves and flooding. In the past decade, efforts have been multiplied in Nigeria to cut back on flaring and, eventually, end the practice altogether. A major event in this regard was the start of natural gas exports in October 1999 from a US-$3.8-billion Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) plant at Bonny Island on the Atlantic coast. The NLNG company, formed in the early 1990s, is a joint venture involving Nigeria (49 percent), Shell (25.6 percent) Totalfina-Elf (15 percent), and Agip (10.4 percent). Exxon-Mobil has its own natural gas liquids project which, the company says, is now using 70 percent of the natural gas obtained in its oilfields. Chevron has its Escravos Gas Project, which was the first to begin gas exports in 1997, and is currently undergoing expansion. Chevron, Shell and the state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation are involved in the West African Gas Pipeline project with the governments of Benin, Ghana and Togo. The project aims to develop a regional market for gas. Most of the companies are also in the process of setting up power plants that will use gas. With all these projects in the works, both Nigerian and oil company officials expressed the hope in 1998 that gas flaring would end by 2008. However, on assuming office in 1999, President Olusegun Obasanjo called for an end to the practice by 2004. Agip and Exxon-Mobil already had plans to end flaring by 2004, while the target year for Totalfina-Elf and Chevron was 2005. However Shell, which produces about half of Nigeria’s oil output, has more extensive operations, and felt more comfortable with a 2008 deadline given the huge costs the operation entailed. "By 2008, all Shell flow-stations and processing facilities will be provided with equipment to gather and harness their gas," said David Balogun, one of the managers responsible for Shell Nigeria's gas projects, "and Shell and its customers will be able to utilise this gas under normal operating conditions". Vice President Atiku Abubakar announced in late October that the new deadline for ending all gas flares in the oil region would be 2008. Critics have denounced the change as evidence that Shell is shaping the government’s energy policy. But Chima Okeke, an oil industry expert, argues that the difference of four years is largely academic. "Considering that the flares will be at their most minimal in the last four years, probably less than 15 percent of total gas produced, I don’t think it matters too much," he told IRIN. "We should just hope that irreversible damage was not done to the environment during the preceding 45 years of the flares."