Emmanuel Addeh in Abuja
Managing Director, Clenik Petrotech Solutions, Clara Ikuku has advocated the use of green technology in Nigeria’s oil and gas industry to end gas flaring and half incessant loss of the molecules.
Speaking on the sidelines of the recently concluded Nigeria International Petroleum Summit (NIPS) in Abuja, the geologist and reservoir engineer, who noted that green technology has been successfully applied in basins in Texas where there is zero gas flare.
Ikuku said Nigeria has a lot to benefit from utilising its gas resources from generating more revenue to protecting the environment around the industry.
She said: “My green technology will be a game changer for the gas to power programme. It is time now to end gas flaring because we need the gas to develop our economy and for future generation. We need it for sustainable development.
“We cannot continue to do business as usual. A lot of big banks and financial institutions are taking out their money from the oil sector because they think that we are polluting the environment because of global warming.
“If we show to these stakeholders and these big banks that we can still produce the oil safely with zero gas flares, then we can get the investment we need.”
She said the Canadian-based company which also has an office in Houston, is presently partnering with a green technology company to develop the technology which has been successfully applied at the Appalachian Basin in the US.
Explaining how the technology works, she stated that it remains one of the most reliable ways to ensure clean energy for the Nigerian people and avoid the hazards associated with carbon emissions.
She added: “It takes the gas, once the well has been completed, and streams it together with the water in the well to a pipeline. But before this, it has a whole lot of separators right at the well site, the separators will separate the constituents.
“The oil which you can sell and then the gas which you can compress and re-inject if you want to manage your reservoir to maintain pressure in your reservoir. You can compress the gas and sell them or re-inject them for enhanced oil recovery.
“Then, because a lot of companies spend so much money on water disposal; they drill water disposal wells, they are looking for ways to manage the produced water.
“This case, it is a closed loop and so you don’t need to spend money on disposal. All you need to do is recycle the water and re-inject it into the well for pressure maintenance as well.”
She added: “It is a closed loop where nothing is wasted. The oil is separated right at your well and then sold, the gas is compressed re-injected or sold and the water is recycled.”
She said the company, which currently consults for Saudi Aramco in Texas is seeking to go into discussion with people in charge of gas-to-power programme as well as the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) on the benefits of deploying the technology in Nigeria.
Executive Director, Operations, Clenik Petrotech Solutions, Lulu Barango, in his urged young and growing entrepreneurs to take advantage of the immense opportunities provided by the summit.
Barango, advised indigenous companies in the oil and gas space to pay more attention to providing solutions by initiating a technology solution mix, rather than focusing on foreign procurement.
