Chevron Nigeria has recorded a 95 per cent success in gas flaring reduction.
It said it was exploiting measures to ensure a 100 per cent feat.
Communications Manager, Chevron Nigeria Mid Africa, Mr. Victor Anyaegbudike, made this known during the Nigerian-American Chamber of Commerce (NACC) Breakfast Meeting in Lagos.
He said the company would ensure free gas flaring in the country, insisting that the company would do it.
He said the company had established the Escravos Gas-to-Liquid (EGTL) project that would pick gases and put them in liquid, adding that soon the EGTL will be brought into Nigeria and the liquid will come to Nigeria as diesel.
“We had already seen where the world is going that we have to really stop the emission of gas, not only gas, methane is another terrible carbon that we need to bring down”, adding that no responsible company would want to flare its gas, because it is a commercial property for Nigeria.
Highlighting the importance of the commodity, Anyaegbudike said gas is the next fuel, hence, it is the destination the firm is headed in terms of carbon emission. He said Chevron had done a lot in terms of reducing gas flare, which according to him, is impacting the communities.
“You see as time goes on when there’s zero flare there wouldn’t be any health hazards again associated with such kind of gas flare, that’s what we are doing and that’s the big story that we have and that we have been doing over the years,” he expressed.
According to Anyaegbudike, Nigeria’s declaration of a decade of gas initiative means there is a need to explore how gas could be commercially viable and how gas could become the transition fuel of the next century.
He recalled that Chevron had started talking about decade of gas even before Nigeria, hence, its focus in that direction long before now.
Speaking on the theme: “Chevron’s Strategic Social Investments-Supporting Nigerian Institutions” he said the company has what it calls gas gathering and compression systems. “We try to gather the gas that we have everywhere, those gas that would have been flared, we have facility to gather them from wherever the gas are, we have pipelines that gather them,” he said.
According to him, Chevron was the first company that started the Escravo project. He explained that when all these gases were picked it goes to a gas project where they are purified. This, he noted, makes the firm the highest supplier of domestic gas among all the international oil companies (IOCs) from 2015 till now.
“Because we produce this gas what we do is that we gather them, we don’t flare them any more that’s why the 95 percent and we are going to 100 percent,” he insisted.
The Deputy National President, Nigerian-American Chamber of Commerce (NACC), Thomas Oshobu, said Chevron had been a strategic investor and player in the oil and gas sector for several decades. According to Oshodu, who is the Deputy National President, the Foundation for Partnership Initiatives in the Niger Delta (PIND), was also incorporated in the country to implement and support these programmes. “You recall in 2014 Chevron committed an additional $40million in funding to the NDPI through 2019. Chevron has contributed significantly in the past as existing social investments efforts and focusing on one strategic objective and that’s achieving a peaceful enabling environment for equitable growth particularly in the Niger Delta as well as human capacity building initiative for Nigerians as a whole,” Oshobu stated.
He noted that the country was in dire economic stress at the moment and therefore all efforts to help rebuild this nation both on the macro and the micro space must be welcomed and appreciated.
