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Nigeria has promised to end gas flaring by 2030 under its national climate plan but communities are sceptical, given previous unmet deadlines
She ran her hand over the rough patches on the walls of her house, leaving a pattern of dirt, the tell-tale sign of decades of gas flaring that communities in Nigeria’s oil-rich Niger Delta have endured.
Ekaette Robert, who lives in Esit Eket, an oil-rich community in Nigeria’s southern Akwa-Ibom state, has endured great hardships with unbroken optimism in recent years. In the seven years since her husband’s death, she has struggled to provide for her five children, and now her livelihood is in peril.
After her husband’s death, Robert started farming cassava to make a living. She rarely makes a profit. Gas flaring – burning off methane as an unwanted byproduct of oil extraction – increases soil temperatureRobert and other farmers saw a decrease in their crop yields.
“The yield is very discouraging and it is getting worse by the day. My cassava stems withered and despite applying fertilisers, the problem still persists,” she told Climate Home News. She cannot afford to send two children to school.
Residents in the nearby village Ibeno suffer from declining fish stocks and excessive heat.
“Rainwater visibly changes colour and is not consumable. We only manage to use it to wash and maybe bathe,” said Daniel Afia, Ibeno’s village head, who retired from the fishing business after a long period of unprofitable endeavours.
Esit Eket is an oil producing community that has endured harsh living conditions, rising poverty levels, and loss of livelihoods since Frontiers Oil (and ExxonMobil) began operating there in 2003 and 1974, respectively.
Gas flaring in the Niger Delta is killing crops, polluting waters and causing health problems for people. The government has Promised to end flaring by 2030The national climate plan is being implemented, but the community remains skeptical due to previous failures and a lack of enforcement and technology.
Farmer Okon Ekpobia shows poor quality harvest (Photo by Ndueso Etuk).
Okon Ekpobia is the village head for Idung Akpeudo in Esit Eket. He farms yam and other crops, but is often frustrated by the harvest.
“Crops don’t do well since oil exploration started in this community,” he said. “Both the quality and the yield is nothing to write home about. I can’t sell my produce and make decent profit from it.”
Farmer Victor Isong, expressed worries over the rising heat, which is affecting his family’s health.
“It does not matter whether it is plants, animals or human beings, everything in our environment is suffering,” Isong said. “My wife and children often come down with heat stroke.”
“At the moment, I have a cough and it is common knowledge that it is caused by the polluted water we drink and the gas flare,” he said.
Thomas Esenyi, Esik Eset farmer, recalls how scared and panicked he was when Frontiers Oil’s November gas leak caused a gas leak at an oil facility.
“The fault started during routine maintenance. The entire community was affected by the gas leakage. The company had to warn residents not to make any kind of fire and to keep the community safe. We were breathing in that gas and many had chest pain and were fatigued after the incident,” he told Climate Home News.
Numerous studies have shown that this is the case. highlightedThe devastating effects of gas flaring in the Niger Delta, including loss biodiversity and shrinking water resources.
“Oil exploration activities, especially gas flaring, has resulted in the extinction of many fish species, especially Bonga fish,” Emmanuel Etia, a fisherman in Ibeno, told Climate Home News. “The flared gas and the ensuing heat also affect the breeding cycle of fish causing some species to migrate to a different area.”
Gas flaring in Ibeno, Nigeria (Photo: Ndueso Etuk)
Nigeria is Africa’s most populous country and the continent’s biggest oil producer. Nigeria is Africa’s largest oil producer and has the highest gas reserves. world’s top 10 gas producersWith estimated reserves of 5.72 trillion cubic meters (tcm).
Since 2012, Nigeria was among the top seven countries flaring gas. According to the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation Nigeria was able to flare 35.4 tcmBetween 2016 and 2020, natural gas.
NigeriaUnder the national climate plan, to stop gas flaring by 2030
Flaring produces methane, CO2, and volatile organic compounds. Global warming is greatly influenced by methane which is the main component of fossil fuels. Even though it is only a part of the atmosphere, for around nine yearsMethane can have a warming impact 84 times that of CO2 over a 20-year period. According to the, oil production was responsible for 40% of global methane omissions in 2020. International Energy Agency (IEA)..
It causes health and environmental problems, but it also wastes fuel that could be used to generate revenue if it’s captured and sold. According to the 2018 Nigerian Gas Flaring Report, Nigeria lost $762 Million to gas flaring. PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).
There is also a large unmet demand for electricity. According to the World Bank85 million Nigerians don’t have access to electricity grids. This results in economic losses of 2% annually.
Children living in Ibeno in Niger Delta (Photo courtesy Ndueso Etuk)
The country is trying hard to reform. Nigeria has pledged to End gas flaring by 2030Under a revised climate change plan submitted by the UN last year, the country has signed up to this Global Methane PledgeAlongside 110 other countries, it pledged to reduce emissions by 30% by 2030. The country also adopted its Climate Change Act in 2021.
Nigeria has pledged to cutIts emissions will drop by half by 2050, and it will achieve net zero emissions by 2060.
Gas flaring undermines Nigeria’s climate goals, Chukwumerije Okereke, a professor in environment and development at Reading University, told Climate Home News.
“Gas flaring is the largest single source of climate pollution in Nigeria contributing about 55 Million Tonnesof carbon equivalent per year. It is important to arrest the climate pollution from gas flaring if Nigeria is really interested in tackling climate change,” he said.
Many experts and residents of the Niger Delta are sceptical about the government’s goal, in light of its record. Since the first legislation to regulate the oil industry, the Petroleum Act of 1969Despite being enacted, 10 deadlines for the end of gas flaring were missed.
The country continues to invest in oil and gas exploration and is Promised to remain one of Africa’s lead crude oil producers and top three gas producers for the next three years.
Previous attempts to tackle the problem have not succeeded primarily because “of the failure to align political and economic interests to action,” Okereke said. “Some of the major climate action that the government could take to address this problem invites them to go against certain powerful interests.”
Canoes at the shore of Ibeno in Nigeria (Photo by Ndueso Etuk).
Samson Benu, an official at the Nigeria Erosion and Watershed Management Project (NEWMAP), said the country’s infrastructure deficit and lack of finance must be addressed before significant progress can be made. Previous attempts to provide these resources since 2016, through the government’s Programme for gas flare commercialisation,a shambolic system and lack of the necessary technology.
The government created a severance program to discourage multinational corporations from using flaring gas. Penalty of $2Per thousand cubic feet of gas lost. According to Nigeria’s National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA)The volume of flaring in 2021 was equivalent to $521 Million in fines. These were mostly unpaid.
Nnimmo Bassey, an environmental activist, said that Climate Home News would rather pay the fine than invest the necessary infrastructure.
“The problem right now is that the Nigerian state is the majority shareholder in all the joint ventures and stopping gas flaring requires that majority shareholders provide the [necessary funds],” he said.
Impact of oil exploration activities at Aieto spill site, Nembe, Nigeria’s Bayelsa state (Photo: Health of Mother Earth Foundation)
Bassey criticised some of the provisions in Nigeria’s Climate Change Act, including the requirement that all companies of 50 or more employees set annual emissions reduction targets. Bassey claimed that companies will be able to play with figures and create fictional solutions due the poor oversight of regulatory agencies.
Tijah Bolton-Akpan, the executive director of the environmental justice organisation Policy Alert, called the law “a feel-good illusion”. He said the law does not align with the country’s overall development agenda, which is still very much reliant on crude oil.
“We have a contradiction. On the one hand, we have emissions reduction targets and on the other hand, an economy that isn’t in a hurry to diversify away from the fossil industry. There is an energy transition blind-spot,” Bolton-Akpan told Climate Home News.
He stated that the Act does no include the goal of cleaning up oil pollution-affected communities.
“The least the government can do now is to put in place a framework to clean up their badly damaged environment and enable them to have their lives back,” he said.
Bolton-Akpan’s implementation fears also extend to data collection. It remains a problem that international oil companies operating in Nigeria are not disclosing the carbon intensity of their reserves, production processes, and outputs.
For fisher Etia, the government’s intents are lofty but they amount to nothing if time is not devoted to enforcement.
“Our lives are not a reflection of the amount of resources in our land because of gas flaring. The government should quit talking and get to work,” he told Climate Home News.
Oil companies operating in the Niger Delta and state government officials did not respond to Climate Home News’ requests for comment.
This article is part. Climate justice reporting program supported by the Climate Justice Resilience Fund.
