The Federal Government of Nigeria plans to sell 50 gas-flaring clusters in the Niger Delta, under the Nigerian Gas Flare Commercialisation Programme (NGFCP). As a result, $1 billion will be generated as revenue. NGFCP is in line with the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA), and aside revenues generated from tax, the programme will generate between $80 million and $100 million per annum from selling the gas flare clusters.
The programme was created by the Ministry of Petroleum Resources for implementation in 2018 and 2019 through the defunct Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR). It was first birthed as an idea in the year 2016, and it is targeted at creating jobs, reducing gas flaring, energy transition, amongst many other functions. The Covid-19 Pandemic had effects on the programme and slowed its process in impacting the global oil and gas industry.
Fresh efforts were titled to making up for NGFCP’s process rate by creating PIA and Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC), to relaunch the programme in August 2022. The main objective of the programme is to take out third-party investments gas flaring options. NGFCP allows the public to have access to create value from the gas that is being flared, while the Commission works on stopping routine gas flaring.
The Chief Executive Officer of NUPRC, Gbenga Komolafe, revealed that flared gas commercialisation should be considered in line with aggregate value to the economy from the programme, rather than just revenues. Opportunities around flaring communities and cottage industry, will be created. To implement the NGFCP, the total GDP impact could be more than $1 billion.
A Pre-bidder’s Conference was hosted on October 19, by the commission, to engage investment communities to be aware of what is in the market, and for the commission to know the expectations of interested parties. Mr. Gbenga further highlighted some of the programme’s impacts to be reduction of environmental pollution and deleterious health complications from gas flaring; elimination of resource wastage due to burning of natural gas, amongst others.
