The Minister of State for Petroleum, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu is angry… “Oil companies that fail to stop gas flaring by 2019 will have their licenses revoked.”

“Government wants to end flare, oil companies still give lot of reasons why flare cannot be ended. The bottom line is cash call and money. But the reality is that whether or not we deal with cash call issues, it is not an optional agenda, it is a compulsive immediate agenda. It is destructive to the populace; it is intolerable in developed country and it should not be tolerable here either.”

“Any oil company that cannot find a way to ending its flare, ought not to be producing. And I have said to the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR), beginning from next year, we are going to get quite frantic about this and companies that cannot meet with extended periods — the issue is not how much you pay in terms of fines for flaring, the issue is that you would not produce. We need to begin to look at foreclosing of licences. This is very urgent.”

“Some of the ones that have come recently for renewals have insisted that they are building massive gas processing plants and we are going to follow this right through, so that the supply obligation, the processing facility, the treatment of gas; their submissions are very accurate and very aggressive.”