Daily Independent Newspapers
Director of the Department off Petroleum Resources (DPR), Mr Tony Chukwueke, who declared government’s position at the recent international Conference of the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) in Abuja , made it clear that operating companies that defy the directive would come under severe sanctions.

As part of the broad national aspirations in the upstream petroleum industry, government had set 2008 as the deadline for operators to achieve zero flares at production sites.

The goal is to harness natural gas for monetisation, reduce green house gas emission to protect the environment and resource waste, broaden national revenue base, boost local content in industry operations, attract significant direct foreign investment in Liquefaction and pipeline projects and enhance electricity generation through gas fired thermal plants.

Consequently government is positioning gas to play a central role in the new aspiration to shoot the nation up to one of the 20 world economies by 2020. Apart from the targeted huge export income and rising internal utilization, the linkage role of gas is expected to provide the energy base for the planned accelerated growth rate of 10 per cent gross domestic product per annum.

Also, in line policy continuity, the present administration of President Musa Yar’ Adua has recognised the rising importance of gas and established it as one of the tripods in the overall economic growth objectives of the Energy Ministry on the same statue as Petroleum and Power.

The new status of gas as a separate industry independent of oil is to put the industry reforms objectives on fast track and achieve the short-term wins of ending flaring by 2008.

Mr Chukwueke had reiterated at numerous industry fora that government was vehement about the 2008 deadline, warning that producing oil fields still flaring associated gas at the time would come under penal measures.

The penalties Daily Independent gathered would range from heavy fines to withdrawal of operating licenses.

But operators at the recent SPE event in Abuja pointed at funding constraints, and rising cost, militants’ hostilities in the Niger Delta and associated insecurities in the environment as the major challenges working against efforts to beat the 2008 deadline.