Nigeria’s gas-to-power suffers as flaring hits 702m scfpd

The nation’s gas-to-power supply may still be in the doldrums as the thermal power stations continued to face shortage of feedstock, while the resources are largely wasted away through flaring.

Indeed, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) confirmed that about 702.79 million standard cubic feet per day (mmscfd) representing about 9.27 per cent of gas produced was flared in February 2016.

This is coming as the nation is yet to get respite from the incessant power outages, which has nearly crippled business and domestic activities.

The Minister for Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola had linked the outage to lack of gas supply and spate of vandalism.

Facts from the Federal Ministry of Power showed that energy generation stood at 3,271 Mega Watts (MW) as at 2nd April, while the peak demand is estimated at 12,800MW.

However, the NNPC’s latest monthly report showed that a total of 664mmscfd was delivered to the gas-fired power plants in February to generate an average of about 3,065 MW compared with March 2015 to February 2016 average of gas supply 703mmscfd and power generation of 3,013MW.

It stated: “Out of the 219.92 billion cubic feet (BCF) of gas produced in February 2016, a total of 124.21BCF was commercialized comprising of 29.84BCF and 94.37BCF for the domestic and export market respectively.

“This translates to an average daily supply of 1,029.03mmscfd of gas to the domestic market and 3,254.12mmscfd of gas supplied to the export market.

“This implies that 56.48 per cent of the total gas produced was commercialized while the balance of 43.52 per cent was either re-injected, used as upstream fuel gas or flared. Gas flare rate was 9.27 per cent for the month of February 2016 i.e. 702.79mmscfd compared with average gas flare rate of 9.12 per cent i.e. 713.68mmscfd for the period March 2015 to February 2016,” it stated.