‘Nigeria No Longer Top Gas Flaring Nation’ …Has Reduced Flares From 65 To 20%

The Managing Director of the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG), Babs Omotowa, has said that the company has reduced gas flaring from 65 per cent to 20 per cent in the country.
The managing director also added that Nigeria was no longer in the league of top five gas flaring countries in the world.
Omotowa made this known in a statement made available to The Tide, shortly after commissioning the NLNG/University of Ilorin Engineering Research Centre in Ilorin, Kwara State, at the weekend.
He said that through the company’s university support programme, NLNG was investing $12 million in six universities in the country.
The statement quoted Omotowa as saying that: “One of the reasons why Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) was established was to reduce gas flaring in the country. When we started Nigeria was flaring about 65 per cent of its gas. We were the second highest gas flaring nation in the world.
“Through the construction of the six trains we have in NLNG we have helped to bring that down to about 20 per cent and today we are no longer among the top five gas flaring countries in the world. So we are very proud that we have contributed to the environmental improvement in the country and the health implications of that.
“In addition, we provide a significant source of revenue for the nation and are also today supplying a vast majority of the cooking gas used in many homes in Nigeria today,” he stated.
The NLNG boss listed the benefiting universities under the education research support programme as Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria; University of Ilorin (UNILORIN), University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN); University of Ibadan (UI), University of Maiduguri (UNIMAID); and University of Port Harcourt (UNIPORT).
Omotowa added that one of the company’s “approaches is to develop Nigerian human capital and foster technological advancement in our great country. We recognize that universities are one of the critical fertile grounds from which ideas to fast-track Nigeria’s progress will spring from.
“With this programme, Nigeria LNG is partnering with six universities in Nigeria to uplift engineering teaching and research in our tertiary institutions. On its part, Nigeria LNG invested $2 million each to build and equip world-class engineering facilities in these schools,” he noted.
He said the universities were chosen based on their relative ranking in their geo-political zones by the Nigerian Universities Commission (NUC) and the world ranking of universities.

Susan Serekara-Nwikhana