By Ngozi Onyeakusi—The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC Ltd.) is working in collaboration with the U.S. Department of State Bureau of Energy Resources (DOS-ENR) under the Energy and Mineral Governance Program (EMGP) and Deloitte, as the implementing partner to meet its net-zero carbon goals by embarking on a project aimed to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions through methane abatement plans and strategies consistent with international leading practices.

The pilot project which is at its conceptual stage was the focus of a three-day Technical Assistance on Oil & Gas Sector Global Methane Abatement and Decarbonisation Workshop which kicked off at the PTDF Tower, in Abuja, on Monday.

The workshop, which is a follow-up on the July 2023 capacity building Training on Methane Baselining and Organisational Design and the Development of a Methane Technology Evaluation Framework, is aimed at defining the critical success elements for the Methane Abatement Pilot Project Implementation, Scaling and Financing.

Some of the critical elements of the project tabled at the workshop include determining the scope of the project, establishing a baseline for methane and carbon emissions from the selected operation sites, collecting relevant data on the selected sites and helping the Deloitte consultants understand the operations and expectations of NNPC Ltd.

Participants at the workshop unanimously selected OML 34 located onshore in Western Niger Delta which has the Utorogu and Ughelli Fields as the operation site for the pilot stage of the project.

Participants were drawn from relevant NNPC Ltd.’s subsidiaries and Departments such as Exploration & Production; New Energy; Gas Infrastructure; Health, Safety, and Environment, as well as the Ministry of Petroleum Resources, and Federal Government agencies like the National Council on Climate Change.

The project technical training is sponsored by the United States Department of State’s Bureau of Energy Resources’ Energy and Mineral Governance Programme (EMGP).