Nigeria takes gas flare sale campaign to US

Nigeria will hold talks with US business executives on ways to collaborate to ensure the success of the later this month, Justice Derefaka, programme manager, Nigeria Gas Flare Commercialisation Programme has said.

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The upcoming conference on powering local markets in the Middle East and Africa organised by the United States Department of Commerce will hold from Sep. 30 – Oct. 2.

 

The forum will be focused on bringing together global leaders across the oil and gas, renewable energy, electricity infrastructure, engineering, construction and transportation sectors. It will also create opportunities for matchmaking and networking sessions and build new business partnerships with US-based executives, the event organisers said.

“At this Discover Global Markets event, you will have the opportunity to hold one-on-one meetings with US companies and US government officials, and to present opportunities in Nigeria to US suppliers and US project prime contractors looking to grow their business,” said the invitation extended to Derefaka.

For Nigeria is in dire need of foreign direct investments, this could not have come at a better time. Nigeria has progressively been attracting less foreign direct investments and need to start creating enabling environment beyond just rhetoric. According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) $222.8 million was imported as FDI in the second quarter (Q2) of 2019, the lowest since Q2 2016.

Not only does that compare poorly with FDI flows to African peers from South Africa to Egypt, it translates to an FDI per head of $1.14 compared to the Africa average of nearly $100 per head, according to World Bank data. In 2018, while South Africa and Egypt attracted FDI worth $5.3bn and $6.8bn respectively, Nigeria raised $2bn, according to UNCTAD data.

The Nigerian Gas Flare Commercialization Programme is an ambitious plan to sell over 700 million standard cubic feet of gas a day flared at 178 different sites.

Approved in 2016 by the Federal Government, the NGFCP seeks to achieve the government target of eliminating gas flaring in the Niger Delta by 2020. The Petroleum Act of 1969 and Flare Gas (Prevention of Waste and Pollution) Regulations 2018, signed in July 2018, provide the basis for the NGFCP.

Based on the right of the Federal Government under the Petroleum Act to take gas at the flare-free of cost, the NGFCP was launched by the Ministry of Petroleum Resources in December 2016. It is designed to offer a series of auction rounds, wherein the Federal Government takes the flare gas at the flare site, and auctions it to third parties for commercialisation.

Over 700 applications were received in the first round of the bid process concluded on February 28 after which all the applications were evaluated to prequalify competent investors in March. The programme is on course and proceeding to the final stages where the eventual winners would be announced.

“The design of the NGFCP according to our development partners is an innovative, robust and scalable approach to gas flare reduction – a “game-changer” (first of a kind) consistent with the climate change action plans anticipated in the Paris Climate Change Accords which could be replicable in many other gas flaring countries around the World with Nigeria setting the pace,” Derefaka said.