With the increasing deregulation of Nigeria's economy,
many international oil and gas corporation are seeking new
opportunities and more effective ways of working the
industry. This time, the Nigerian subsidiary of U.S. oil
giant, Mobil, is to reduce gas flaring in its areas of
operation in the country to 10 percent by 2004. The company
says this is in line with its environmental, health and
safety policy. Carol Antaih, an environmentalist with the company, said
that gas flaring as a percentage of national total gas
produced averaged 40 percent in 1996, but had been reduced
to 31 percent in 1998 by the company. He said in a special
report on Mobil Producing Nigeria Unlimited's performance,
titled "meeting our commitments", that the company would
continue to lead the Nigerian industry in gas utilisation.
He added that the company had submitted its 1998 emissions
inventory data to the Mobil's headquarters in Fairfax, US, a
global study on the impact of emissions on the climate. In February, 1998, the chief executive officer of Mobil
Corporation, Lucio Noto, announced a set of environment,
health and safety goals on workplace safety, spills, fires
and explosion. In addition to setting these goals, Noto said
that Mobil would institute a programme to collect data
world-wide on the corporation's emissions, water discharges,
waste generation and energy use. The objectives of the emissions inventory programme, he
explained, was to get a better understanding of Mobil's
environmental performance world-wide, to set goals for the
improvement and to publicly report the data and Mobil's
progress in attaining the goals. "The release of various
gases, including water vapour, carbon dioxide, methane and
nitrous oxide into the atmosphere results in trapping of
heat in the atmosphere," he added. This phenomenon is known
as "greenhouse effect". Antaih noted that human activities, such as burning
fossil fuels - coal, oil and natural gas - had increased the
concentration of the greenhouse gases. He said that the
development had led governments to proactively address the
issue and Nigeria set up an inter-ministerial committee on
climate change. The mandate of the committee, which has a
representation from the oil industry and the department of
petroleum resources, is to recommend to government Nigeria's
position on the ratification of the Kyoto protocol on
climate change. 
PETROGASWORKS
U.S. oil giant Mobil to reduce gas
flaring by 10 percent
By Goddy Ikeh/PANA/USAfricaonline.com
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