Nigeria has recorded its most aggressive drop in gas flaring at 700 million standard cubic feet per day, from a peak of 2.5 billion standard cubic feet a few years ago.
The Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Dr Maikanti Baru, said this in a paper he presented at the 2018 Oloibiri Lecture Series (OLEF) hosted by the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) Nigeria Council in Abuja.
He noted that routine flaring from all the gas producers would have stopped in the next few years.
Baru who spoke on the theme, “The Nigerian Oil Industry in a world of Changing Energy Supply- Are we prepared?” said Nigeria was aware o the effect the US Shale oil boom had on the country’s oil exports as well as collapsed oil prices on the country’s monolithic economy.
He said this was why Nigeria was diversifying from oil to gas resources.
Baru who was represented by NNPC’s Chief Operating Officer, Upstream, Bello Rabiu, said the government has embarked on one of the most aggressive gas pipeline infrastructure development. When completed, gas which was hitherto inaccessible and flared, would now be utilized.
The NNPC GMD said that despite these developments NNPC forsees gas supply shortfall by 2020 which has led to the need for NNPC to identify short, medium and long-term gas resources to bridge the huge supply gap.
“We have identified 7 Critical Gas Development Projects (7CGDP) to deliver; about 3.4bscfd to bridge the foreseen gap by 2020 which will be aggressively implemented on an accelerated basis,” he said
The Chairman of the SPE Nigeria Council, Chikezie Nwosu, said the SPE-OLEF is an annual lecture series focused on contributing towards oil and gas policy development of Nigeria in commemoration of the first oil well drilled in Nigeria by Shell at Oloibiri in Ogbia, Bayelsa state in 1956.
Nwosu said, “It has become a forum where SPE Nigeria council brings together key industry players from policy, legislature, regulatory, federal executive, investors, operators, services companies to discuss topical issues in the energy industry with a view to influencing the right policy direction to enable the growth of the industry and the economy.”