*Gas minister says development a milestone
Emmanuel Addeh in Abuja, Blessing Ibunge in Port Harcourt and Peter Uzoho in Lagos
The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC) yesterday announced that the NNPC Ltd/TotalEnergies Joint Venture (JV) has achieved zero routine gas flare in all its assets.
The national oil company said that this is in pursuit of meeting the targets of 20 per cent ‘unconditional’ and 47 per cent ‘conditional’ greenhouse gas emission reduction.
The figures, it said, are as contained in the Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) under the Paris Accord signed by the President Bola Tinubu administration.
This ‘feat’, according to a statement by the Chief Corporate Communications Officer of the NNPC, Olufemi Soneye, was made public during an inspection tour of OML 100 in South-eastern Niger Delta, off Port Harcourt.
He said the tour was by a joint NNPC Ltd and TotalEnergies team to ascertain the success of the OML flare reduction project launched in December 2023.
“The NNPC Ltd/TotalEnergies Joint Venture, which is the concession holder of four leases, had hitherto achieved zero routine flaring across OML 99 (2006), OML 102 (2014), and OML 58 (2016), leaving OML 100 as the only lease with routine flaring going on.
“The significance of this achievement is that the last routine flare volume of about 12MMscf/d (twelve million standard cubic feet per day) of gas has now been eliminated, giving rise to a greenhouse gas emissions reduction of about 341KtCOze/yr,” it said.
The achievement, the NNPC stressed, is an outcome of a programme introduced by the NNPC Ltd to galvanise action towards achieving the zero routine flare by 2030 across its portfolio of assets.
It added that it is also a testament to NNPC Ltd’s prioritisation of sustainability anchored on the ‘first R’ of its 5R Strategy (Reduce, Replace, Renew, Re-plant, Repurpose), as it strives to reduce its carbon footprint.
“Work is ongoing across all other assets within NNPC Ltd’s upstream directorate to ensure that all assets achieve zero routine flaring by 2030 or earlier,” it added.
Meanwhile, the Minister of State Petroleum Resources (Gas), Ekperikpe Ekpo, was part of the visit to Amenam Kpono deep offshore FSPO, in OML 100, to witness the flare-out of gas flares on TotalEnergies Nigerian platforms.
Ekpo, while commending TotalEnergies for achieving the milestone, said that attaining the zero-routine gas flaring in all exploration & production operations in Nigeria, especially at OML 100, wa not just a milestone.
According to him, it is “a testament to our collective commitment to environmental stewardship and sustainable development in the energy sector.”
