Federal Government to revoke oil firms licences

the Federal government says Oil companies that fail to stop gas flaring by 2019 would have their licenses revoked.

The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu stated this at the 2018 Buyers Forum/Stakeholders Engagement at the Gas Aggregation Company of Nigeria (GACN) in Abuja.

He said government would launch the gas infrastructure improvement programme in November.

He said the programme has the potential of attracting between $20 billion and $30 billion investments into the petroleum industry and also help in addressing the infrastructural deficiencies in the industry.

He said there has been a Cold War between the Federal Government and the upstream oil companies as a result of gas flaring, saying while government has been eager to bring the menace of gas flaring to an end, the oil firms are pre-occupied with making excuses for continuing the flaring.

Kachikwu said the main cause of the lingering disagreement the oil firms have with the government on ending gas flaring was cash call and other related financial issues..

The Minister said 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.

He said Any oil company that cannot find a way to ending its flare, ought not to be producing.He said and I Quote, 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,