• FEI kicks over break of promises
Charles Okonji
Shell, operator of Nigeria’s largest oil fields, has admitted flaring more than half of gas in the country between 2002 and 2010 after installing gathering infrastructure.
Associated gas flaring, or burning off the fuel pumped together with crude oil production, declined to less than 300 million cubic feet a day down from about 600 million feet a day over the eight-year period.
Worldwide, the company increased flaring by 32 per cent in 2010 from a year earlier on higher output in Nigeria and the start of a project in Iraq, it said in its Sustainability Report.
Shell said: “Around 80 percent of this continuous flaring takes place in Nigeria where the security situation and a lack of funding from the government partner has previously slowed progress on projects to capture the associated gas.
“Flaring in Iraq will rise in future years as production increases and before equipment to capture the associated gas can be installed,” it added.
The company and its partners are investing about $2 billion to end flaring in Nigeria, Africa’s biggest oil producer, in addition to $3 billion spent on the project since 2002.
Meanwhile, Friends of the Earth International (FEI) has accused Shell of breaking its promises of ending gas flaring in Nigeria.
FEI said that despite promises made by Shell since the 1990s to stop flaring the ‘associated’ gas released in oil production in Nigeria, the oil concern flared more gas in 2010 than it did in 2009 in the West African country.
The organisation condemned the increase of this unnecessary and harmful practice and calls on the Nigerian government and the international community to force Shell to stop flaring.
The Director of Friends of the Earth Nigeria and chair of Friends of the Earth International, Nnimmo Bassey, said: “Shell has been flaring gas in Nigeria since 1958. Though gas flaring has been illegal, to them it is a standard industry practice.
“They continue to reap obscene profits from the oil fields of Nigeria at the expense of the lives and the livelihoods of the poor people. While they speak from both sides of their mouths we see that they are increasing the volume of gas flared and are thus intensifying their poisoning of the environment and
the peoples of the region.
“They engage in this unacceptable and illegal activity just for the maximisation of their profits. Gas flaring is an act of ecocide and everyone should join us to demand that Shell stops this
madness,” he added.
Gas flaring has serious negative impacts on the health of local residents and on the environment – while the flared gas could simply be captured and used as natural gas, to the benefit of local people who often do not even have electricity in their houses. In 2007 Shell promised that it would stop flaring gas in Nigeria in 2009.
He said that the “meaningless promises and violations of environmental and human rights” by the Dutch oil giant was a concern of the Dutch Parliament as well.
In January of this year, it held a hearing on the conduct of Shell in Nigeria, were parliamentarians criticised the needless practice of flaring.
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