Upsetting the Offset - Transnational Institute

Upsetting the Offset
The case of the West African Gas Pipeline (WAGP) in a further
demonstration of how proposed projects in the CDM have been employed to
claim credits for future reductions in gas flaring by multinationals. As one of the
region’s largest trans-boundary investments the WAGP, which is incorporated
in Bermuda, is a 681 km onshore and offshore pipeline meant to transport
natural gas from gas fields in the western Niger Delta of Nigeria to selected
consumers in Benin Republic, Togo and Ghana. Construction on the WAGP
started in 2004 and was ‘substantially completed’ in 2007. Project promoters,
including Chevron and Shell, stated that WAGP will reduce carbon emissions,
provide cheaper, more reliable and environmentally friendly energy, and foster
economic development and integration in Ghana, Togo, Benin and Nigeria. But
the WAGP was linked to a previously existing Escravos-Lagos Pipeline (ELP),
which collects gas from Chevron’s Escravos Gas Plant that was built to process
unflared non-associated gas.
It remains unclear how the WAGP would reduce flaring, when it is intended
to process not the ‘waste’ gas associated with crude oil that has been flared for
decades, but rather the newer non-associated gas reserves often developed for
export. So the question is how Chevron, Shell, the Nigerian government and
other sponsors of the WAGP can explain how to end associated gas flaring by
building a pipeline to transport non-associated gas? Interestingly, when this
author and other citizen-activists confronted Chris Miller, a Chevron official
and project manager of the WAGP face to face with this question, Miller
admitted that projections on greenhouse gas emissions reduction from the
WAGP were ‘theoretical’. 16 But such assumptions did not stop Chevron from
continuing to mount a spirited campaign to justify its request for carbon credits
on account of the WAGP.
Such theoretical estimations of emissions reductions is commonplace in the
industry, and should disqualify carbon credit seeking corporations for failing to
meet measurability criteria of the CDM. Indeed, the corporations would fail on all
other criteria of the CDM including additionality, sustainable development,
Environmental Impact Assessment and community consultation.
In Nigeria, gas flaring is also already prohibited and companies like Chevron
and Shell have been paying a penalty for non-compliance. So, oil industry
projects like the WAGP claiming to reduce gas flaring cannot be said to provide
any additionality. 17 Also, oil and gas production rarely contributes to economic
development in developing countries. Fifty years of oil and gas development in
Nigeria have resulted in mass impoverishment, as a result of pollution and
mismanagement of oil rents. Dependence on rent from oil and gas have resulted
in the abandonment of other sectors of the economy like agriculture and
manufacturing that contribute more to GDP.
Communities in Nigeria and Ghana protested the inadequate processes and
content of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) for the WAGP. The draft
EIA was not made available to community people for comments. Copies of the
draft EIA supposed to be on public display at the Lagos State Ministry of
Environment were hidden in the office of the Permanent Secretary, away from
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