SOStainabilityWeekly
Edited by Oke Epia, E-mail: sostainability01@gmail.com | WhatsApp: +234 8034000706
Flakes and Flaks
Last Friday, Nigeria’s Guardian Newspaper published a bold but damning report on methane emissions. The report highlighted regulatory failures, corporate negligence, and the contradictory behaviour of a state mouthing commitment to net zero but engaging in unfettered exploration of fossil fuels. Unexpectedly, there has been helter-skelter in boardrooms in Lagos, Abuja, and the Western headquarters of companies, regulators, and contracted lobbyist firms. Sadly, this frenzied reaction is not about the deleterious consequences of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions on the oppressed, suppressed, and repressed host communities of the Niger Delta. It is about the reputation, security of investment, and the bottom line of the firms and regulators in the centre of the scandal. The picturesque newspaper report captured the scale of Nigeria’s methane emissions challenge in a way that should make climate-conscious private and institutional investors rethink the real impact of their financing of Nigeria’s upstream petroleum exploration on host communities, the environment and the planet – the triple bottom line.
The Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) and operators, such as the state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation Ltd (NNPCL), called out by the report, should pick up the challenge in good faith. The Commission should enforce the methane abatement regulations it has so commendably put together. This page has made this call in a previous piece. For emphasis, we reproduce a part of the publication thus: “The NUPRC deserves credit for issuing it (regulations). However, the same NUPRC directive acknowledges that the Commission observed ‘technical capacity limitations and infrastructural MRV gaps’ during implementation. And the underlying problem is deeper than technical capacity. The Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI), in a September 2024 report, documented that Nigeria’s MRV system primarily relies on self-reporting, that independent and empirically verified measurements are scarce, and that there is a ten-fold variance between the lowest and highest estimated methane emissions reported by the government and third-party sources. A ten-fold variance. That is not a marginal error — it is a credibility crisis. The NUPRC must make all emissions data submitted by companies publicly accessible on its website and through the NEITI audit process. It must also mandate independent third-party verification of self-reported data immediately, as the carbon market’s credibility depends on credible enforcement.”
The Guardian report would perhaps not have been so hard-hitting if the NUPRC had heeded our advocacy. SOStainability will continue on this path until regulations are enforced. Not just on methane emissions but on all climate commitments Nigeria willingly made.
SOS Alert
“Nigeria’s oil sector is facing renewed public scrutiny after allegations of policy underperformance, questionable transactions, and renewed contract controversies surrounding senior leadership at NNPC and the NUPRC.”
- A group, Oil and Gas Professionals Forum, protesting alleged insider abuse of the recently conducted oil mining licensing round
