How gas flaring harms health, climate and environment in Niger Delta community

For about six decades, oil exploration has been going on in the Niger Delta region. And it has brought spin-offs like gas flaring – which devastates the environment and health of people. JUSTICE NWAFOR travelled to Obrikom, the host of one of Nigeria’s biggest gas plants, where gas flaring has taken place for nearly three decades and documents how the residents live with the devastating impacts. This is the second of a three-part in-depth series exploring the impacts of oil exploration on the indigenous people of the Niger Delta.

Located 76 kilometres northwest of Port Harcourt – Nigeria’s largest oil city – in the Niger Delta region, is Obrikom community. Largely peaceful, it is inhabited by indigenous Ogba people who are predominantly farmers and fisherfolks and traders. With a total population of about 400,000, Ogba people hold in high esteem their cultural beliefs and practices like the annual community river cleansing (called Nchaka) and new-yam eating festivals, despite the influence of civilisation.

During the five-day Nchaka, the traditional rulers – who are the heads of their respective communities – and the eldest of women visit the rivers and perform rituals and chant incantations to drive away evil spirits, ill luck and illnesses from the community. The elderly women dress in traditional fabrics called Akwefe from the shoulder to the waist and hold burning firewood in their right hand.

Their houses, a mix of apartments and bungalows, wear rusted zinc roofs like torn royal hats. The streets, dotted with kiosks, are sandy with a mix of asphalted ones that look hurriedly constructed. There are a few haphazard drainage gutters, mostly half filled with sand. Beyond these, something really devastating is taking place in Obrikom – gas flaring. It is the burning of natural gas associated with oil extraction.

About one kilometre from 52-year-old petty trader Azubuike Osi ’s three-bedroom apartment is the Obiafu-Obrikom gas plant. It started operations in 1984 with an initial capacity of 270 million standard cubic feet (mmscf) of gas per day – equivalent to CO2 emissions from 1.67 billion gallons of gasoline consumed. It was upgraded to 400 mmscf/day in 1994, making it one of the largest in Nigeria.

In the gas plant are three gas flare stacks which tower above other structures in the community. Every minute, the stacks belch smoky methane-laden fire into the skies and generate consistently disturbing noise. This noise could be up to 86 decibels, a study by researchers at the federal university of technology, Minna, found. The temperature in the community averages 33 degrees celsius, especially in the dry (hot) season. A 2011 study published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science found that homes closer to gas flare stacks, like Osi’s, could experience temperatures four degrees Celsius higher than others.

From the operation, Nigeria Agip Oil Company (a subsidiary of Italian oil giant Eni) – which operates the plant – and the Nigerian government earn millions of dollars yearly while Obrikom residents, like Azubuike, are faced with health and environmental complications. For instance, in January and March this year, Nigeria sold gas worth $243.57 million for local consumption and export. The European Union Ambassador to Nigeria, Samuela Isopi, said in April that because of the Russia-Ukraine war, 40 per cent of the country’s gas is now being exported to the EU.

Gas flaring impacts the climate and environment negatively. Experts say it contributes to global warming by releasing CO2. Acid rain, which affects the productivity of soil for agriculture, is also caused by gas flaring. A study by researchers at Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, found that rain in the Niger Delta region, especially in Rivers State where Obrikom is, is acidic due to gas flaring. It also has cascading impacts on human health.

In 2002, Azubuike got married to Faith. They had simple dreams: erect a house for the family in which every member would sleep peacefully at night, raise healthy children and live peacefully.

Four years later, they built the family house. Now, they have eight children but the noise and flame from the gas flare make life difficult for the family.

“We can hardly hear (because of the noise of the gas flare) and the heat (high temperature) is too much,” says Faith. “At night, sleeping is always difficult because of the discomfort. Most times when the burning gets more fierce, the noise and high temperature are unbearable. My children would roll endlessly on the bed.”

Faith says the constant flares have so affected her and her children that it is now unusual for a day to pass without any of her children crying to her because of intense headaches and itchy eyes. She’s only a petty trader and the constant need to purchase drugs like Anacin, Panadol, Tylenol and eye drops for the kids’ cuts really deep into her meagre purse.

According to data from the gas flare tracker of the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA) of Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Environment, from January 2013 to December 2021, the country flared 3.4 billion Million standard cubic feet (Mscf) valued at $12.0 billion. That resulted in CO2 emissions of 182.3 million tonnes, reveals data from the tracker.

Narrowing down to Ogba/Egbema/Ndoni local government area where Obrikom is located, within the same period, 129.3 million Mscf was flared resulting in the emission of 6.9 million tonnes of CO2.

Experts say residents of communities where gas flaring takes place stand higher risks of experiencing medical conditions like respiratory disorders and cancer, and children like Faith’s are not left out. A study by researchers at the Rivers State University of Science and Technology found the residents of Igwuruta, a community impacted by gas flaring like Obrikom, have a high frequency of medical conditions like eye and skin irritations.

 A 2017 study also found that persons living in gas-flaring host communities in the Niger Delta are 1.75 times more likely to be hypertensive than persons resident in communities without oil and gas exploration activities.

Last year, Raimi Morufu Olalekan, who lectures on community medicine at the Niger Delta University, studied the quality of groundwater in Obrikom, comparing water quality parameters in the community with those of the recommended standards. The study found that the water in the community had magnesium, iron and heavy metals such as cadmium, lead, chromium, and nickel above the recommended levels. This means that residents of the community who drink water from boreholes drilled in the community are likely to experience medical conditions related to kidney malfunction, lung cancer, breathing problems, heart problems, asthma, nasal passage cancer and more, the report explained.

In July 2022 when Raimi spoke to the Nigerian Tribune about the study, he affirmed that the water remains unsuitable for drinking and that the inhabitants of Obrikom are vulnerable as a result of their prolonged exposure through persistent consumption of the water.

“Gas flaring, mineral dissolution/precipitation and anthropogenic input (like the release of waste) are the main sources of physicochemical indices (physical and chemical properties) and trace elements in the water,” he explained.

The air in Obrikom is not as safe as it should be. The constant belching of fire from the flare stack means the air in the community has been compromised and this puts the residents in great danger, Raimi says.

“Gas flaring has contributed to pollution build-up in our environment,” Raimi says. “It has increased the prevalence of particulate matter in the community. This is particularly dangerous for those who are asthmatic.”

Besides air pollution, noise pollution, as experienced by Faith and her family as well as other residents of Obrikom, Raimi says, has deep implications on the health and development of the residents, especially children. The United States Environmental Protection Agency says apart from tinnitus which is described as a ringing or buzzing sound in the ear (a symptom associated with many forms of hearing loss), repeated exposure to noise during critical periods of development may affect a child’s acquisition of speech, language, and language-related skills, such as reading and listening.

‘The government takes taxes while we suffer’

When Christian Nkisa retired from the Nigeria Police Force after 35 years of service, he hoped to spend the rest of his years in good health. Having spent most of the service years outside of his hometown, he thought it was the right time to go home to Obrikom – and he did.

“I served for 35 years and retired. During my service, I did not have problems with my eyes,” Nkisa, who is now the traditional ruler of Obrikom, told the Nigerian Tribune. After two years in the community, Nkisa said he started having problems with seeing clearly and constant eye itches.

When the problem started, Nkisa said he visited a hospital where he was told his condition is related to constant exposure to gas flaring in Obrikom. Now he spends a large part of the little money he makes from farming on routine medical checkups and medication.

“You can see how my eyes are now,” he said while dabbing tears from his bloodshot eyes with a soft white napkin. “In this community, almost everybody has an eye problem.”

The anger of Nkisa and other residents of the Obrikom is not just against Agip from whose facilities the gas flaring takes place but against the federal government of Nigeria, because part of the proceeds from the oil exploration in the community, which leads to the harmful practice, is what sustains the country economically.

“You can see the smoke coming from the gas flare site. There’s no other place it’s going other than sitting with the people. The federal government takes taxes from them (the company) while we suffer the implications.”

There are reports of Agip carrying out projects to improve facilities in the community, like the construction of an Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) centre. But Nkisa says the firm has not done enough. For instance, he raised an official complaint to the office of the president of Nigeria in 2019 about hazards from the firm’s activities. After the complaint, both parties were called for negotiations and the firm promised to construct “three internal roads in 2020 and 2021, respectively, and (carry out) the extension of electricity to where there is none,” Nkisa says. “In 2020, instead of three, they completed two. 2020 has gone, one road is left, 2021, we are now in 2022 and there is nothing.”

Folu Olapade, the spokesperson of Agip and Domenico Spina of Eni’s Reference Press Office, Upstream, were contacted for comments. Spina promised to get back with a statement but did not, eight weeks after Nigerian Tribune emailed questions and several follow-ups.

Continuous gas flaring affecting food security

Beyond the health impacts, Lebari Sibe, an environmental chemist and climate expert at the University of Port Harcourt says there are intrinsic, chain-like implications on the climate, food security in the Niger Delta and increased methane emissions in the country. This is concerning given that methane is more than 25 times as potent as carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere and over the past two centuries, its concentrations in the atmosphere have more than doubled.

He explained that continuous gas flaring contributes largely to the acidification of the rivers, and says this is the starting point of the chain. Due to poor access to drinking water, most residents drink from the exposed rivers.

“The residents are exposed to acidic water and the soil we use in agriculture is acidified and I can tell you that acidic soil does not support good soil fertility and it affects crop production, as well as the nutritional value of crops. This can be linked to the food crisis we are having in the country. Though not the only factor, gas flaring is one the factors contributing to the food crisis in the Niger Delta,” Sibe explains.

Nkisa, who lived in the community before he left to serve in the Nigerian Police, recalls with nostalgia what the situation was 35 years ago: “I was born here before oil exploration started. Then, one person could not carry the harvest from a few ridges of cassava because our crops did so well. But now, you can harvest your entire farmland without getting a significant quantity to take home because the soil has been affected (by recurrent gas flare).”

Nkisa’s complaint is an experience Faith knows so well: “Our cassava yield is usually poor and when we cultivate vegetables, the leaves turn yellow and eventually die off without much yield,” Faith says.

The same acid rain that falls on land, falls into the rivers and acidifies the rivers. This could lead to the death of fish and other seafood and affect the availability of protein to the Niger Delta people.

As a result, “we are forced to depend on meat from cows which is also a serious source of methane emission. When we are forced to rely on livestock like cows, we are forced to engage more in the farming of these livestock and the emission of methane, for example, from cow dung, will be higher and that increases the emission of methane generally. And that has very serious impacts on the climate.”

Sibe’s explanation is on point given that the GHG emissions from Nigeria’s agricultural sector hit 82MtCO2e in 2019, only behind Ethiopia’s in Sub-Saharan Africa – and more than the combined total CO2e emissions from Botswana, Namibia, Mauritania, Mauritius, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Eritrea, Central African Republic and Lesotho. The country ranks only behind South Africa on the list of top greenhouse gas emitters in Sub-Saharan Africa with 402 Million metric tonnes of Carbon Dioxide equivalent (MtCO2e) emitted in 2019, according to Climate Watch – a platform the World Resources Institute designed to provide climate data. And the Nigerian government in its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) says 60 per cent of the country’s greenhouse gas emission comes from the energy sector where gas flaring features prominently.

At the United Nations’ global climate talks in Glasgow last year (COP26), Nigeria pledged to attain net-zero emissions by 2060. In its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), it pledged to cut emissions 20 per cent by 2030 compared with business-as-usual levels. If the country receives international financial support, it could increase the cut to 47 per cent below business-as-usual by 2030, it says.

“The continuous exploration of oil and gas and environmental impact from the sector, disjointed regulations, improper execution, and lack of political will to implement some regulations” will make it difficult for the country to meet such targets,” Kingsley Ukhurebor, a lecturer at the Department of Physics at Edo State University, Nigeria, and Research Fellow at the West African Science Service Centre on Climate Change and Adapted Land Use (WASCAL), Burkina Faso, told Nigerian Tribune in June.

As dire as the implications are, gas flaring, which commenced alongside petroleum exploration in the Niger Delta in 1956, is not new to the residents of the region.

At sunset, hundreds of flare stacks light up the landscape of the region with over 30 million inhabitants. People who have lived all their lives here, like Emmanuel Omodu, the youth leader of Obrikom, feel helpless and see living with the hazard as a way of life which has been forced on them.

Omodu is not happy that the government and the oil companies do not care about the health implications of their activities on helpless residents like him and others in Obrikom.

“We live in the hazard. It is our world. When we cry, the government is only interested in what they are benefiting,” he says.

Nigeria is the number one gas flarer in Sub-Saharan Africa and has consistently been among the top seven flarers globally for the past decade, only behind Russia, Iraq, Iran, the United States, Algeria and Venezuela. Together, the World Bank says, these countries produce 40 per cent of the world’s oil each year, but account for roughly two-thirds of global gas flaring.

There have been several calls on the government to end the harmful practice over the years but none of the calls have compelled authorities to act decisively. The best it has done has been to announce new policies and dates to end the flaring but still, no concrete actions have been taken. For instance, Nigeria announced it would end the practice in 2009 but failed. Again, it set a 2012 target but missed it too.

Most recently, Nigeria Gas Flare Commercialisation Programme (NGFCP) was initiated with the aim to stop gas flaring in 2020. Again, the deadline was missed.

In fact, between 1969 and 2020, 10 deadlines to end gas flaring in the region were missed.

Chinazo Mbaonu, whose master’s dissertation at Teesside University, United Kingdom, focuses on emissions in West African countries, told Nigerian Tribune that though the government claims it has made progress in emissions reduction, the continuous flaring of methane in the country is primarily because the authorities “have not shown enough will to deal with the problem.”

Part of the NGFCP and other regulations in the past is that oil companies that flare gas would pay fines. But the fines – $2.0 per thousand standard cubic feet of gas flared by firms producing 10,000 barrels of oil or more per day and $0.50 per thousand standard cubic feet for firms producing less than 10,000 barrels of oil per day –  are weak and not enough of a deterrent for the polluters.

“This boils down to the kind of regulations they are putting in place,” says Mbaonu. “The polluters are big guys with a lot of money and are ready to pay penalties if it’d be more profitable for them to continue flaring. So, the measures put in place are not enough to deter polluters. In fact, the fines should be so huge that it should scare them,” says Mbaonu.

Sibe agrees with Mbaonu. He says that the oil companies are still flaring gas because it is cheaper for them to flare than to spend money on facilities to capture and process it for sale, not minding the implications on the environment and people’s health.

“If we increase the carbon price (the cost applied to carbon pollution to encourage polluters to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases they emit into the atmosphere), the polluters will retract,” Sibe says.

The Nigerian Tribune reached out to Mr Paul Osu, Head of Public Affairs of the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission for comment on why NGFCP has been abandoned and why gas flaring still persists in the country. But he did not respond to any of the requests.

‘Our land has lost its value’

While Obrikom lacks good road connectivity despite Agip’s promises, it is surrounded by a network of high-pressure gas pipelines. When this reporter visited the community, within a few meters, Omodu pointed to 36-inch and 24-inch gas pressure lines underneath farmland and another 6-inch line (1.2 metres above the ground) on which locals hang washed clothes to dry. These lines are all a few steps away from residential buildings.

“Our land value has diminished (because) the community is crisscrossed by gas pipelines,” Omodu decries, asking “how will the community grow? Where will the community develop additional infrastructure? Can you build on top of a 24-inch gas pressure line?”

He fears that the hazards of gas flaring in the community and the numerous gas pressure lines may affect the generation of Ogba people after him. “If a fire or gas explosion happens in this community any time, we are finished. The explosion may not be in my lifetime; it could be in my children’s or grandchildren’s.”

Nigerian Tribune reached out to Eni seeking to learn how often they conduct maintenance checks, but the spokesperson did not respond.

Wasting gas in energy poverty

Nigeria has an energy problem. According to the World Bank, about 80 million people living in the country – more than the number of people living in Australia, Rwanda, Belgium, Netherlands and Sweden combined – do not have access to electricity. Even those who have, experience sporadic supply and blighting cuts which last days and weeks.

So, a lot of them rely on small-size smoke-belching petrol and diesel generators. In fact, a 2019 report by Dalberg – a global strategy and policy advisory firm – says these generators are used in at least 11 million homes across the country, with a collective capacity eight times higher than that of the national grid. The national grid’s transmission wheeling capacity is 5,300 megawatts, according to the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC).

About two-thirds of the power generation companies in Nigeria are gas-fired. However, their operations have been hampered by inadequate gas supply. The country has the ninth-largest proven natural gas reserve of over 192 trillion cubic feet. This means it has about 306 years of gas left (at current consumption levels and excluding unproven reserves).

Beyond the health and environmental hazards, stopping routine flaring of gas and converting it to usable forms can help Nigeria provide constant electricity to its citizens including residents of Obrikom who see light on gas flare stacks more often than on light bulbs.

After this reporter’s interview with Nkisa, he agreed to speak to the Nigerian Tribune on video the next day. But on that day, his eye problem worsened, such that he could not speak for minutes without serious discomfort.

“He cannot come out to see anybody today, his eyes have gone worse”, Nkisa’s wife Lolo, said. This is exactly why we are talking about the gas flare. You can see what it has caused.”

• This story was produced with the support of Internews’ Earth Journalism Network.

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