Despite sustained regulatory measures to reduce gas flaring in Nigeria’s hydrocarbon resources industry to the barest minimum over the past two decades, the nation lost an estimated 62,400 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of potential electricity generation from flared gas between 2024 and 2025.
The 2025 gas flare rate represented 18.6 per cent increase from 50,800 GWh recorded in 2022 and 2023.
Latest data published by the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA) showed that the value of gas flared during the period stood at $2.2 billion, while defaulting industry operators, including International Oil Companies (IOCs) and National Oil Companies (NOCs), were slammed with penalties amounting to $1.2 billion for breaching the law on the menace.
The agency reported that companies operating onshore flared 380.6 million standard cubic feet (SCF) of gas, compared with 243.8 million SCF flared offshore and that the flared gas led to an estimated 33.2 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.
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It lamented that despite decades of interventions to curb gas flaring through legislative and other initiatives, the rate of gas flaring in the country remained high with the attendant implications for huge losses of valuable energy resources for national development and immeasurable damages to the environment.
The latest NORSDA’s findings align with the World Bank’s Global Gas Flaring Tracker Report, which ranked Nigeria among the world’s top nine gas-flaring countries in 2025.
According to the report, “the nine countries namely, Russia, Iran, Iraq, Venezuela, Mexico, Libya, Algeria, Nigeria and the United States accounted for 83 per cent of all gas flared worldwide in 2025, despite contributing only 46 per cent of global oil production.
The bank reported that global gas flaring rose to 167 billion cubic metres (bcm) in the year under review, while Nigeria flared about nine bcm, making it the world’s seventh-largest gas-flaring nation.
It would be recalled that routine gas flaring has been formally illegal in Nigeria since 2005. The government has also pledged to achieve Zero Routine Flaring by 2030 under World Bank-backed commitments.
However, enforcement remains weak. Although NOSDRA calculated $646.1 million in flaring penalties for 2025, but most of the fines go uncollected. For instance, a 2024 Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) report indicated that over $1.4 billion remained unpaid in gas royalties and flaring penalties.
