LAGOS, Jan 27 (AFP) - Anglo-Dutch oil giant Shell on Thursday restated its commitment to end glas flaring in Nigeria by 2008 and said it had invested two billion dollars (1.5 billion euros) so far in the project.
"The Shell Petroleum and Development Company (SPDC) remains highly committed to ending routine flaring of gas by 2008," but added that meeting the target would be a a "significant challenge" to the company.
"We are studying what can be done to achieve this target. We remain committed to sound environmental management and to playing our part as a business in contributing to the economic and social development of Nigeria and the Niger Delta," it said.
Last year, the company closed some oil producing wells with high gas-to-oil ratios and managed to reduce gas flaring from 891 million standard cubic feet a day to a year-end level of 560 million a day.
A 30 percent reduction was also achieved in the volume of oil spills (from 9,900 barrels in 2003 to 7,240 barrels in 2004), Shell said.
Only three per cent of the volume of oil spills in 2004 resulted from equipment failure, corrosion or human error. The remaining 97 per cent was caused by sabotage, it added.
"Sabotage remains a concern and in many cases communities act to prevent SPDC from promptly stopping spills in a bid to earn more compensation or create more clean-up work for their people, it also said.
In recent years, ethnic uprisings, communal protests, pirate attacks and kidnappings have disrupted production and sent shockwaves through the already volatile international oil markets.
Shell, which accounts for more than a third of the Nigeria's output of 2.5 million barrels a day, has been operating in Nigeria for about 60 years.
Nigeria, Africa's largest oil producer and the world's sixth biggest oil exporter, derives more than 95 percent of its foreign exchange earnings from oil.
01/27/2005 20:00 GMT - AFP