Gas flaring activities by the Oil and Gas firms operating in the country has made Nigeria to lose $794.22 million amounting to about N246.209bn worth of gas flared in 2016 alone, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has revealed.
The NNPC, in its recently released Financial and Operations Report, stated that the companies flared 245.13 billion standard cubic feet (BCF) of gas in 2016. Using the current gas price of $3.24 per 1,000 standard cubic feet as quoted by the NNPC, and an average Naira exchange rate of N310 to a dollar, the total amount of gas flared translated to a loss of N246.209 billion.
Specifically, for the months of January, February, March, April, May and June 2016, 22.32BCF; 20.38BCF; 20.11BCF; 18.70BCF; 15.80BCF and 14.80BCF of gas was flared respectively, while 21.79BCF; 21.14BCF; 21.50BCF; 22.60BCF; 24.54BCF and 21.44BCF of gas was flared in the months of July, August, September, October, November and December respectively.
In general, a total 2.581 trillion cubic feet of gas was produced in 2016. The amount of gas flared represented 9.5% of total gas produced in the year under review.
Of the total gas produced in the year under review, the NNPC report disclosed that 1.447 trillion cubic feet, comprising 307.22 BCF and 1.14 trillion standard cubic feet (TCF) for the domestic and export market respectively, was commercialized, while 1.134 TCF of the commodity was not commercialized.
In the domestic gas segment, 189.49 BCF of gas was utilized by the power sector; while 117.74 BCF was utilized by the industrial sector in the year under review.
In the export segment, 4.06 BCF was utilized by the West African Gas Pipeline (WAGP); Escravos Gas gto Liquid (EGTL) utilized 41.08 BCF; 94.34 BCF was utilized for Natural Gas Liquid/Liquefied Petroleum Gas (NGL/LPG), while the NLNG utilized 1.0 TCF of total gas output.
In the non-commercialised segment, 752.58 BCF of gas was re-injected; 245.13 BCF was flared, while 136.03 BCF was used as fuel gas.
Furthermore, the NNPC disclosed that the country earned $837.74 million from the export sales of gas in 2016, comprising exports from the NLNG, EGTL, NGLs and N-Gas.
On the other hand, the country recorded a revenue of N28.4 bn from the domestic sales of gas in the year under review.
On its plans for the future, the NNPC noted that beyond growing gas for the power sector, there had been a strategic positioning of the sector to support massive gas-based industrialization.
The NNPC stated that it would incubate and midwife a portfolio of critical and mutually dependent investments – Central Processing Facilities, CPFs, Fertilizer, Petrochemical, Free Trade Zone, FTZ, infrastructure and Ports – which will jumpstart the gas revolution agenda.
The NNPC added that it intends to develop or take equity in some of these gas-based industries such as fertilizer and others.
