A Professor of Environmental Management and Control, Christian Madu, has urged the Federal Government and energy (oil and gas) companies to deploy technology to check gas flaring in the country.
Madu, a lecturer with the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN), made the call while speaking with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Enugu on Monday.
He said that the move became necessary to ensure that gas, being lost, is captured; further leading to reduction in cooking gas price for low income households.
According to him, this will help to check ecological challenge of tree felling and rural dwellers returning to the use of firewood and charcoal; the result of which is the country losing gains made in forest and vegetation protection.
Madu, who served as Shell/NNPC Professor of Environmental Management from 2016 to 2020, said: “Federal Government and its partnering energy extracting companies and multi-nationals should improve on technology to recover more of the gases flared.
“This is in a bid to control the cost of production and passing the gains of the stoppage of gas flaring, to consumers (low income earners),” he said.
He called on government to hold a meeting with relevant stakeholders’ such as rural dwellers and low-income earners that were recently introduced to use of cooking gas and given free gas cylinders by the government and energy companies.
“The aim of the meeting is to understand the reason for the high cost of cooking gas, assess the environmental burdens, understand the plight of low- to medium-income earners who have been recently initiated into the use of cooking gas programme, and explore options to control the cost.
“Second, is to develop a subsidy programme that may be based on income capacity.
“Finally, a grassroots approach should be taken to communicate with the rural dwellers to win their trust and assure them on the viability of the cooking gas programme,” he said. (NAN)
