Abstract
Nigeria is rated the number one producer of crude oil in Africa. Still, oil exploration activities have resulted in a high rate of gas flaring due to weak enforcement of the anti-gas flaring laws by the regulatory authorities. Associated natural gas is generated from oil production, and it is burnt in large volumes, thereby leading to the emission of greenhouse gases and waste of natural resources which could have generated billions of dollars for the Federal Government of Nigeria. There are concerns that if nothing is done to curtail this menace, humans and the environment will be imperiled due to its negative consequences. There is therefore a need to decrease gas flaring by replicating the strategies applied in the selected case study countries to combat the menace. It is relevant to carry out this analysis to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the oil industry for the sustainability of the energy sector and to generate more revenues for the government. This study provides guidelines for legislatures on suitable approaches to adopt for formulating an anti-flaring legal framework. The study is a comparative analysis of national legal regimes on gas flaring in Nigeria, Canada, the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, and Norway. The study adopts a doctrinal legal research method, a point-by-point comparative approach with a library-based legal research method. The study finds that weak enforcement of laws is a critical factor responsible for the menace. It recommends the use of more advanced technologies, a sophisticated mixture of regulations and non-regulatory incentives such as fiscal policies and gas market restructuring, and proffers further suggestions based on the lessons learnt from the selected case study countries.
Highlights
Nigeria is endowed with enormous gas reserves of about 159 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and it is ranked one of the top ten countries provided with natural gas in the world (Orlando 2006).An approximately 2.5 billion cubic feet of gas is declared as being flamed by the numerous oil facilities in Nigeria (Oyewunmi and Oyewunmi 2016)
Gas flaring is the disposition of natural gas or associated gas that comes with crude oil during oil exploitation and exploration activities in the upstream petroleum sector
Poor record keeping culture and operational clandestineness of some petroleum companies and regulatory authorities in the sector limit access to some required information for the research, its findings are suitable for dealing with gas flaring and other social menaces in other sectors of Nigeria’s economy
Summary
Nigeria is endowed with enormous gas reserves of about 159 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and it is ranked one of the top ten countries provided with natural gas in the world (Orlando 2006).An approximately 2.5 billion cubic feet of gas is declared as being flamed by the numerous oil facilities in Nigeria (Oyewunmi and Oyewunmi 2016). Nigeria is endowed with enormous gas reserves of about 159 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and it is ranked one of the top ten countries provided with natural gas in the world (Orlando 2006). The aim of this study is to decrease gas flaring by replicating the strategies applied in the selected case study countries to combat gas flaring, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the oil industry for the sustainability of the energy sector, and to generate more revenues for the Federal. Gas flaring is an operational waste of energy resources in the petroleum sector that encourages greenhouse gas emissions. This is contrary to the 1992 United Nations Convention on
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