Why Senegal Should Minimize Petroleum Operations Emissions

Minimizing emissions, particularly of methane, from the country’s oil and gas operations will increase government revenues, support its ambitions to use gas to increase domestic energy access, and reduce harms to the health and environment of local communities. [...] W H Y S E N E G A L S H O U L D M I N I M I Z E P E T R O L E U M O P E R AT I O N S E M I S S I O N S 2 Introduction With large-scale oil and gas production likely to start within the next year, Senegal’s government has been working to nalize plans for management of the resulting revenues and domestic use of some gas.1 The development of Senegal's energy sector is also inuenced by a context of gl. [...] Public sector providers of funding are particularly likely to consider the government’s approach to emissions in the wider value chain.23 At a time when funding for gas-to-power infrastructure is already uncertain and competition for it is erce, signicant emissions from Senegal’s oil and gas production could therefore be a damaging blow to the country’s ambitions and its ability to achieve univers. [...] In Nigeria, for example, ared gas alone has exceeded gas supplied to the domestic market for much of the past two decades and cost the government around USD 1 billion in annual revenues (though the situation has improved recently).29 ,30 Local health and environment Serigne Saliou Mbacke for NRGI The severe eects of greenhouse gas emissions on people’s health and the environment are well known. [...] The impact on the health and environment of communities living close to sites of oil and gas extraction is also increasingly evident.31 ,32 Gas aring in Nigeria, for example, has caused respiratory diseases and fever, along with other health issues, in children.33 It has also led to acid rain and heatwaves that have destroyed farmland and caused the extinction of ora and fauna.34 Current understan.