FG to Revoke Licenses of Oil Firms Over Gas Flaring

SEATTLE (Oil Monster): The Federal Government, Monday, disclosed that from next year, it would commence the revocation of the licences of oil companies that fail to stop flaring of gas in their operations in the country.

Speaking at the 2018 Buyers’ Forum/Stakeholders’ Engagement organised by the Gas Aggregation Company of Nigeria, GACN, Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Mr. Ibe Kachikwu, also stated that the Federal Government would launch the infrastructure revamp programme in November, that has the potential of attracting between $20 billion and $30 billion of investments into the petroleum industry and also help address the infrastructural deficiencies in the industry.

On the gas flare issue, Kachikwu revealed that the Federal Government had been locked in a battle with upstream oil companies over the issue, explaining that the Federal Government was keen on ending flaring , but oil companies still give lot of reasons why gas flare cannot be ended.

According to him, the bottom line of the disagreement the oil firms had with the government on ending gas flaring was cash call and money.

He said, “Government wants to end flare, oil companies still give lot of reasons why flare cannot be ended. Bottom line is cash call and money. But the reality is that whether or not we deal with cash call issues, it is not an optional agenda, it is a compulsive immediate agenda. It is destructive to the populace; it is intolerable in developed country and it should not be tolerable here either.

Kachikwu stressed that the quest to discourage gas flaring led the Federal Government to initiate the gas flare commercialisation programme. In addition, the minister disclosed that future renewals of oil and gas licences would involve the assessments of the gas components and gas flare rate of each company seeking renewals.

Kachikwu further emphasized the need for a critical implementation of the Domestic Supply Obligation, which would be extended to Domestic Supply and Processing Obligation for both gas and crude oil, stating that the country needed to move away from the point of just producing these commodities, throwing it into the vessel and shipping it out, to the point of processing as much of it locally as much as possible.

According to him, only through this would we be able to create more jobs, create better profit and returns on investments, achieve better pricing and address the challenges of local industries and industrialization.

Courtesy: www.vanguardngr.com