IRIN Special Report on gas pipeline

A pipeline that would feed Nigerian natural gas to three other West African countries is to be laid down within three years, according to a memorandum of understanding signed on Wednesday. The agreement, signed in Cotonou by oil transnationals Chevron and Shell with representatives of the governments of Nigeria, Benin, Togo and Ghana, envisages that the pipeline will be ready by 2002 to deliver gas to power stations and industries in the recipient countries. "Chevron is proposing the construction of the US$ 400-million, 1,000-kilometre offshore pipeline to bring a massive supply of natural gas from reserves in Nigeria," Chevron, which will manage the project, said in a statement. The immediate environmental benefits of the project would include reducing the amount of gas released during petroleum mining that is flared in Nigeria, the world's sixth biggest oil producer and Africa's largest. Environmentalists have identified flares from Nigeria's oilfields, where over 75 percent of natural gas occurring with oil is burned off, as one of the world's major sources of greenhouse gas emissions. At the initial supply capacity of 120 million cubic feet of gas daily, the project will lead to the reduction of West Africa's greenhouse gas emissions by up to 100 million tonnes in 20 years, said officials, quoting a feasibility study on the project by international consulting firm Dames & More Group. Apart from being used in power generation and industries, gas -- the cleanest of all fossil fuels -- will be available for domestic users, eliminating wood and other fuels less friendly to the environment and improving air quality in the region. A drop in the use of fuel wood will also slow down deforestation, which accelerated in the region in recent decades and has been identified as a major threat to agriculture by causing soil erosion and threatening traditional weather patterns. "These accomplishments may qualify the pipeline project as one of the world's first Clean Development Mechanism projects under the Kyoto Protocol of the United Nations Convention on Global Climate Change," a Chevron official told IRIN. With the possibility of extending the reach of the pipeline to other countries on increasing the demand for gas in the region, the benefits to the economy and the environment could spread further, raising the living standards of many. For the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), set up in 1975 to pursue the economic integration of countries that have tended to have closer economic ties with their former colonial powers than one another, the gas pipeline deal is a crucial landmark. "Today's event is a testimony of a new period of hope for West Africa towards economic integration," Lansana Kouyate, ECOWAS executive secretary, declared at the signing ceremony. Ghana's minister for mines and energy, Fred Ohene-Kena, said the over 18,000 jobs the project should create in the participating countries were just one of many economic benefits expected. "In the end we hope it will become the most important, most outstanding cooperation programme implemented within ECOWAS," Ohene-Kena added. Apart from ECOWAS, support for the project has come from the United States of America, Japan, Italy and the World Bank, which provided funding for the feasibility studies. Pledges of assistance have also come from the US Agency for International Development (USAID). USAID officials said help would be provided in addressing environmental, technical and legal issues in the implementation of the project as well as planning and coordination with ECOWAS. "The United States is prepared to work with the countries down this part to ensure that sure and certain steps are taken," Calvin Humphrey, a senior official of the US energy department, said in Cotonou.