TotalEnergies has announced it achievement of zero routine gas flare in all its assets. This was made known by the company’s managing director, Mr Matthieu Bouyer, in Port Harcourt recently while addressing newsmen.
However, Nigeria’s ambitious goal of ending routine gas flaring by 2020 was not achieved, as flaring often occurs in remote areas, making gas utilisation projects expensive.
Attracting sufficient investment for gas utilisation projects has remained a challenge, as an unstable domestic gas demand and limited access to electricity hinder gas project viability.
TotalEnergies EP Nigeria Limited says it has finally achieved zero-routine gas flaring in running its operations in Nigeria, while also investing in renewable energy sources to end greenhouse gas emission.
Meanwhile, the Managing Director of the energy firm said, “Routine flare-out is the stoppage of continuous gas flaring above the nominal safety capacity of an oil and gas facility. Today, we are proud to be the first company in Nigeria to have stopped routine flaring from all our facilities. We continue to pioneer in energy as we started to do 100 years ago.”
According to Bouyer, the achievement is important to TotalEnergies and to Nigeria because the company’s objective is to fully stop routine flaring by 2030.
“On that standpoint, we are in advance in Nigeria since we stopped flaring in 2023. By stopping routine flaring, we are able to valorise the gas, thereby creating value for the country.
“This achievement is one of the practical demonstrations of Total Energies commitment to deliver less carbon-intensive energy to our customers and it also aligns with the Nigerian government’s objective to foster a low carbon economy. In a nutshell, it is more energy for less emission,” he said.
He said the firm in the past years had 300 to 350kSm3/d of routine flaring, noting it has now reduced to zero.
The MD noted, “Previously flared gas was valorised and used for power generation, gas lift to enhance oil and gas production, and the balance exported to Bonny to be liquefied in the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas.”
Speaking about the future, he said, “All TotalEnergies new projects have a mandatory non routine flaring design. The rule is that any new project should improve the emissions intensity of our operations. For example, our recent projects such as Egina and Ikike were stared-up without flaring”.
He recalled that the firm had signed a Memorandum of Understanding with NNPCL in December 2023 “to support them in their journey to reduce Methane emission with the use of our Airborne Ultra-light Spectrometer for Environmental Application technology.”
To reduce gas and liquid fuels consumption, Bouyer explained that TotalEnergies developed energy efficiency technologies by investing in renewables, saying “we use solar technology onshore with a 5 megawatts solar project at our OML58 field. It will contribute to produce a cleaner oil and gas from the field.”
