The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC Ltd.) has initiated steps to tackle the challenges of gas flaring in the country.
Its Group Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer (GMD/CEO), Malam Mele Kyari, during a panel session at the just concluded Nigerian International Energy Summit (NIES 2022) in Abuja, said part of the strategies would be to ensure that any proposed project without clear-cut plans to commercialise or use up its associated gas would no longer be approved.
He said gas utilisation is a major priority of both the Federal government and NNPC, as efforts are on to build infrastructure to replace the current fuel oil and diesel in the nation’s factories with gas which is a cleaner source of energy.
Kyari remarked that the trend is in tandem with the global reality of energy transition.
He, however, stressed that Nigeria as a country needs all the hydrocarbon of today to build the energy of tomorrow.
In his keynote message, the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylva, said the Ministry of Petroleum Resources is ready to provide the needed framework and support for seamless energy transition in the country.
Also speaking at the event, a former Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr Ibe Kachikwu, said focusing on fast-tracking oil production, in-country refining, developing funding stream and leveraging the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) are some of the solutions to the industry’s current challenges.
He advised that gas should be seen as transition fuel with estimated life span of 20 years, adding that industry players should begin to look at alternative sources of energy such as solar and wind, to catch up with the world before 2060.
Other panelists including the Managing Directors of Chevron, SPDC, Exxon Mobil, Deputy Managing Director of Total Energies and General Manager of NLNG expressed commitment to the energy transition aspiration of the Federal Government, while indicating their willingness to partner with NNPC for better business opportunities.
Speaking at the CEO roundtable session under the sub-theme: “Strategies for Confronting the Energy Transition”, Kyari said a key strategy to tackle the energy transition challenge is to beef up investment in the development of physical infrastructure.
This, he said would get electricity to end users across every part of the country.
“We know that in this country, anything less than 30,000 to 40,000megawatts of electricity cannot serve this country adequately.
“The population is growing, the middle class is growing, in fact, their energy requirement is very different; rural-urban migration is at its peak.
“This means that you need more and more infrastructure on ground to close that gap.
“So, we need to be much more productive, industrial growth must be accelerated, infrastructure must be put in place in the short term to grow the economy to a level where we can generate enough revenue to close energy poverty gap.”