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General News of Thursday, 23 January 2020

Source: www.mynigeria.com

Climate change not a big threat to Nigeria

Nigerian Minister of State for Petroleum Resources Timipre Sylva. PHOTO: SCREENSHOT/BLOOMBERG Nigerian Minister of State for Petroleum Resources Timipre Sylva. PHOTO: SCREENSHOT/BLOOMBERG

A statement from Nigeria’s junior minister for petroleum, Timipre Sylva, has distanced Nigeria from the list of countries majorly threatened by the issue of climate change.

Speaking with Bloomberg’s Francine Lacqua at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland on Thursday, Sylva made it known that “climate change is not really a big issue for us."

Nigeria is Africa’s largest producer of oil and one of, at least, 187 countries that ratified the Paris Agreement, a United Nations-backed framework on climate change.

A statement by the Nigerian Government on September 22, 2016, said the country was committed to cutting Green House Gas Emissions unconditionally by 20 percent and conditionally by 45 percent "in line with Nigeria’s Nationally Determined Contributions."

"We have instituted an Inter-Ministerial Committee on Climate Change to govern implementation of my country’s NDCs, thereby ensuring a strong cross-sectoral approach, coherence, and synergy for Climate Action,” President Muhammadu Buhari, who is Nigeria’s substantial minister for petroleum, said in the statement released before a meeting on Taking Climate Action for Sustainable Development in New York, co-hosted by Nigeria and the United Nations Environment Programme, UNEP, on the sidelines of the 71st United Nations General Assembly."

Buhari doubled down on Nigeria’s commitment to fighting climate last September, telling world leaders at the United Nations Climate Action Summit that the world was on the “verge of climate catastrophe.”

But when asked if the focus on sustainability and climate change will impact Nigeria’s relationship with oil companies, Sylva told Bloomberg TV that the country’s focus is not “renewables” but on switching to gas.

“We have always said that in Nigeria, it is not really a race against renewables.

“It is a race against carbon emission. And for us, we are really moving towards gas this year as our solution.”

Africa’s largest oil producer is notorious for gas flaring in its core oil-producing region. Statistics published government-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation in 2019 showed that 218.9 billion standard cubic feet of gas was flared in 2018.

The NNPC said that gas flaring cost the country about N243.23 billion in revenue in 2018 alone. [Guardian]