Traveling deep into the heart of the Niger Delta typical oil
producing communities you will physically experience a burning sensation
on your skin as though a massive fire has been ignited all around the
environment and the temperature ranges between 30-35 degrees Celsius
each day.
The experiences are more or less like that of a roasted meat in an
over heated oven. Frankly speaking, these communities are indeed been
roasted daily by the massive flames from stacks setup by petrochemical
companies located in the heart of the Niger Delta communities.
This high temperatures arises as a result of gas flares stacks used
in burning off natural gases during crude oil extraction and refining
processing in other to give way for the liquefied petroleum products to
be refined. Some of the communities which bear most of the impacts of
gas flaring are those communities located around flow stations and
petrochemical refineries.
Sometimes in these communities they experience carbon soot in their
environment which poses grave dangers and health threats to the
inhabitants of the community most especially to the infants and children
whose respiratory tracts are too tender to cope with toxic air
pollution substances. That is the main reasons why, dry cough, asthma,
bronchitis, and lung cancer are some of the most common respiratory
diseases which are more evident in host communities in the region.
Nigeria’s Niger Delta region has been known over the years to have in
abundance natural gas which comes along with crude oil during
extraction, but the fact remains that the gases are not been utilized
properly rather they are burnt off as gas flares thereby causing untold
hardship for host communities located around these productions and
refining sites.
Presently natural gas is been flared in Nigeria more than anywhere
else in the world. Estimates are notoriously unreliable, but roughly 2.5
billion cubic feet of gas associated with crude oil is wasted in this
way every day in. Nigeria is flaring about 40% of produced gas and
re-injecting just 12% to enhance oil recovery during extraction
processes.
For clearer understanding, the term Gas flaring connotes the burning
of natural gas and petroleum hydrocarbons in flare stacks by upstream
oil companies in oil fields during operations. Gas flaring is the
singular and most common source of global warming and contributes to
emissions of carbon monoxide, nitrogen(II) oxide and methane which have
the propensity of causing environmental pollution and ecological
disturbances or destruction.
Gas flaring has lead to series of untold hardship in host communities
such as the emergence of health challenges, food shortages, and
infertility among other things. Still with these impacts community women
in their ignorance, still go ahead to process their local food by the
side of these flare stacks because they feel the heat from the flares
dries their product quicker than then heat generated from sunlight, but
unknowingly to them the flares produced are very toxic in nature,
containing various forms of carbon monoxides, Carbon dioxide, methane
and Sulfur oxides which causes global warming and at the same time are
harmful to their health.
Visiting some of these communities you will see children playing and
dancing by the gas flares sites while their mothers dry up the fishes
they caught from their polluted rivers and stream and others drying up
their cassava flakes commonly called kpokpogari in the Niger Delta area.
Amidst the heat they experience they still dry their harvest without
any cares in the world of what might be the impact of the heat emitted
from the flares sites because they have no other means and sources of
energy supply to dry their harvest.
Women in Ogoni area as well as other Niger Delta host communities
experiences various health problems such as strange heat rashes all over
their body due to high temperatures, miscarriages, infertility and
their young girls between the ages of 19 and 20 years experiencing early
menopause, their farm land are now infertile due to lack of nutrient
and excessive heat from the gas flares sites.
Gas flares impacts on Communities and food production
Gas flares in
the past 5 decades have so impacted host communities in such a way that
these communities whose women preserves and process their food with the
heat from gas flares experiences more health problems than those who buy
their food items from other processed sources, this is due to the fact
that gas flares emits various poisonous and toxic fumes which causes
diverse health complications. Gases such as CO2, methane (CH4), among
others are the byproducts of gas flares.
Gas flares produces the primary GHGs, CFCs, CO2 and methane (CH4)
gases which causes global warming. In addition, flaring of gas rich in
liquids can produce smoke, with aerosol effects that also contribute to
global warming. Gas flaring causes serious respiratory diseases, cancer
of the lungs and also poisons the blood stream with Carbon monoxide, and
also leads to serious food security problems by drying up the soil
nutrients which in turn results to stunted growths in plants .and poor
crop yields due to lack of water and plants nutrients which aids proper
plant growth and productivity.
It also renders men infertile as a result of excessive exposure to
radiation from the gas flares by worker or community persons who live
close to these flare sites. Food processing houses and factories sited
close to gas flare sites should be discouraged as it is very poisonous
and deadly. It does not only endanger the lives of the poor farmers and
workers, it also leaves their product contaminated with toxic chemicals
emitted from the flare site.
We
therefore strongly recommend that host community awareness campaigns
should be done on a regular basis to enlighten host community people on
the dangers associated with food processing around gas flare sites. The
Nigerian Government should as a matter of urgency, make stringent laws
and take drastic action against defaulting companies not just by payment
of fines. Fines for defaulting companies should be so exorbitant so as
to deter them. Furthermore the gases wasted as flares can be processed
and produced into cooking/domestic gas and also they should stand by
their proposed dates to stop gas flares in Nigeria as this will save
lives and reduce the current heat waves in host communities in Niger
Delta region. The gases flared can be converted and used as a means for
power generation in other to increase the nation’s power supply in this
era of epileptic power supply.
source: http://deltanewsroom.com/?p=9535
No comments:
Post a Comment