The Department of Petroleum Resources, Nigeria’s regulatory agency for the petroleum industry, is awaiting signal of the President and Minister of State in Abuja to start the process of conducting a bid round of some of the country’s 178 flare gas sites.
It’s the first major implementation of the new legal framework on flared gas reduction, signed by President Buhari in July and gazetted in early September 2018.
The Flare Gas Reduction (Prevention of Waste and Pollution) Regulation 2018, weighs strongly in favour of “The Qualified Applicant” for Flared Gas. That so called Qualified Applicant is a company who wins in a bid round of flare gas sites.
The thinking at the Ministry of Petroleum Resources is that there are many companies out there who want to monetize Nigerian gas, but lack access to the molecules, whereas a lot of operators are wasting the value of natural gas assets by flaring.
