By John A. Jia, Ph.D.
The 1996 World Food Summit defined food security as “when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.”
So, Food Security is “the measure of an individual’s ability to access food that is nutritious and sufficient in quantity.” On the other hand, Wikipedia explains Oil and Gas Production as “the process of extracting crude oil and natural gas from underground reservoirs and bringing them to the surface for processing and distribution.
It further explains that “The petroleum industry is responsible for the exploration, extraction, refining, transportation, and marketing of petroleum products.” Various components of the process listed here can have impacts on Climate leading to climate change.
How then can oil and gas production have direct or indirect impacts on food security – preventing access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food meeting dietary needs and food preferences?
Oil and Gas production have key activities that make it possible for it to happen if not well managed namely:
•Seismic Operations – in layman’s terms, is the search for oil using various technologies to survey and ‘see’ under the ground to discover reservoirs holding the oil deep in the ground. The “surveys allow professionals to identify prospects, assess potential resources, reduce risk and even quantify reserves – in short, to make well-informed decisions that drive successful exploration efforts.”
•Drilling of appraisal wells/Production Wells to confirm that what was ‘seen’ under the ground is good enough for additional investments to develop the field and recover the volumes – the discovery is in commercial quantities. An appraisal Well may be developed into a Production Well.
•Field Development – involves the process of drilling, building of non-oil and gas infrastructure (NOGI) and Oil and Gas Infrastructure (OGI) for extraction, processing, handling and exporting or sale of the oil produced.
•Production operations – utilization of all the infrastructure (Wells, Flowlines, Pipelines, Flowlines, Production Stations, Gas Plants, and Tank Farms including export facilities) for daily extraction of crude oil/gas, processing and sale/export.
•Abandonment – loosely speaking involves management of NOGI and OGI facilities and the environment after the life of the Field. This will not be discussed in this article for lack of space for this article.
All the above steps have various aspects that can interact with the environment to impact Food security and Climate change. According to FAO and others, there are 5 dimensions or components of Food Security namely: Availability, Access, Utilization, Stability and Sustainability.
While many biological factors like population increase, changing diets, pests and pathogens, environmental changes, conflict, poverty/unemployment, et cetera, can reduce food security, each step involved in the Oil and Gas production can also have direct or indirect negative impacts on availability, access, utilization, stability and sustainability of food security especially in the Niger Delta of Nigeria.
Seismic activities for oil and gas exploration can disrupt farming operations. The noise, vibrations, and movement of heavy machinery can affect soil structure, water flow, and crop growth.
For example, in Nigeria’s Niger Delta, seismic surveys have been reported to have caused soil compaction and water contamination, reduced agricultural productivity and harming local farmers’ livelihoods. As the activities often involve the use of chemicals that may contaminate surface and ground water sources, there is potential for water contamination.
Polluted water can affect irrigation systems, leading to poor crop yields and unsafe drinking water for livestock. Chemical spills during seismic surveys in agricultural areas can lead to contamination of water sources, which then impacts the health and productivity of crops and livestock. Another impact is the Destruction of Natural Habitats.
Clearing land for seismic lines can destroy forests, wetlands, and other natural habitats, reducing biodiversity. This loss of biodiversity can impact pollinators, soil health, and natural pest control, which are essential for sustainable agriculture.
The Amazon rainforest, a critical ecosystem for global biodiversity, has been reported to have seen significant habitat destruction due to oil exploration, threatening indigenous food systems and biodiversity. Seismic exploration can lead to the displacement of local communities, including farmers. Displaced communities may lose access to their agricultural lands, leading to food insecurity.
How does this stage of Oil and Gas activity impact on climate change thus affecting food security? You have Greenhouse Gas Emissions, an occurring decimal throughout the oil and gas production value chain. Seismic activities are part of the oil and gas extraction process, which is a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions.
The burning of fossil fuels contributes to global warming and climate change. Methane emissions from natural gas extraction are a potent greenhouse gas, significantly more effective at trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide.
Seismic surveys often require clearing large areas of land, leading to deforestation and land degradation. Forests act as carbon sinks, and their destruction releases stored carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, exacerbating climate change.
Example, in the Congo Basin, deforestation for oil exploration has released large amounts of carbon dioxide, contributing to global climate change. Healthy ecosystems such as forests, wetlands, and grasslands sequester carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Seismic activities that damage these ecosystems reduce their ability to absorb carbon, increasing atmospheric carbon levels. An example is the destruction of mangroves for oil exploration which reduces their capacity to sequester carbon, thus contributing to higher atmospheric CO2 levels.
Also, climate change, driven in part by fossil fuel extraction, leads to more frequent and severe natural disasters such as floods, droughts, and hurricanes. These events can devastate agricultural systems, further threatening food security. Rising global temperatures contribute to more intense droughts in agricultural regions, affecting crop yields and food availability.
Drilling involves land take, utilization of drilling mud, generation of drill cuttings which may be oily depending on the depth at which the cuttings are generated. The land taken (and in some cases may be significant) is no longer available for food production. The land may have been rightly acquired but is no longer available for farming activities for crops and fish production among others.
Also, the drill cuttings if not well treated and disposed responsibly can interact with the environment (change habitats and make them unsuitable for farming). For example, microbes, macrobes, nutrients, on land and aquatic life which are key contributors to soil fertility, aquatic nutrient enrichment are usually impacted including disturbance of food chain.
Infact, irresponsible management of land take, cuttings and chemicals denies soil and water environment of life support for the food chain – changes natural configuration of optimum levels of O2, Nitrates, et cetera required for plant growth, reduced nutrition and taste, chemical uptake and tissues contamination.
Production activities – Oil and Gas processing facilities with asset integrity issues including process safety challenges can lead to loss of containment resulting to oil spills, chemical spills, gas release and in some cases fire. In some cases, and as it is currently in the Niger Delta, oil theft also leads to uncontrolled spills with devastating effects on the environment. The impacts on land and aquatic environments have been shown to affect food security – death of economic trees, farms crops, soil contamination requiring remediation. The damages have direct impact on availability, access, sustainability, utilization, stability thus impacting food security.
Another aspect of production operations with impacts on food security is Effluents to the environment and Emissions to air. Oily water, chemical treatments and produce water (water produced with crude and separated for discharge into the environment) can have direct impacts to food production on impacted land and sea beds if not discharged responsibly and in line with statutory requirements. The effluents if taken up by environmental life including food, have the capability of affecting taste, preventing food from being nutritious in line with the definition of Food Security.
Gas Emission to air which could result from flaring, venting, power generators and vehicles associated with production operations is a key component with impact on food security. A good number of production facilities do not have gas compression capabilities leading to flaring of gas into the air. In some cases, venting which is an intentional release of gas containing methane into the atmosphere are part of some operator’s oil production activities. In all, gas flaring is known to release greenhouse gases like Methane, Carbon dioxide, benzene, etc. In addition, flaring causes air and noise pollution with impacts. The release of these greenhouse gases have impacts on the environment and climate change.
So, what is climate change? Climate change refers to long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns which may be natural like changes in the sun’s activity or large volcanic eruptions. However, studies have shown that human activities have been the main driver of climate change, primarily due to the activities of burning of fossil fuels (like coal, oil and gas), which produces heat-trapping gases like CO, CO2, NOX, among others. This adds huge quantities of greenhouse gases to those naturally present in the atmosphere, increasing the greenhouse effect and global warming. Apart from its encompassing global warming, on a broader scale, it involves changes that include rising sea levels, erosion of mountain glaciers, accelerating ice melt in Arctic regions, Antarctica and Greenland. There is also shifts in flower/plant blooming times. For us in Nigeria – rising sea levels, heavy flooding taking over large acreages of farmlands and sustained non draining of cultivated farm lands, washing away of soil surfaces and nutrients, emergence of gully erosions making farm lands unavailable, aquatic food resources, are examples of the negative contribution of uncontrolled gas releases into the atmosphere with climate change consequences. It can be safely said that Oil and Gas Production operations can have domino effect on food security and climate change.
These impacts are clearly well known hence globally there is: (a) a clear regulatory framework to prevent and or minimize their effects (b) continuous review of guidelines and issuing of more stringent guidelines by the Regulatory Authorities to compel operators in the industry to do the right thing. These regulations and guidelines cover the whole of oil and gas operations value chain from safely carrying out seismic activities with environmental protection, preventing unnecessary land take, promote responsible management of drilling wastes, production effluents, use of chemicals and preventing venting and flaring including a flare out dateline of 2030 for Nigeria. The regulations promote the deployment of cutting-edge technologies to eliminate, measure, monitor and take corrective measures with punitive fines in case of non-compliance. These are all geared toward protecting the environment and food security among other important safety and occupational health requirements.
Finally, while Oil and gas production should have helped to make resources available for increasing food security, a good number of persons who should have been on the farms, especially the young are abandoning farming for oil and gas money. Farming is seen as not yielding high returns compared to earnings from oil and gas operations. There is need to help strike a balance by making farming attractive.
Several Oil and Gas Companies have clear and documented mitigation measures including Environmental Management Plans (EMPs) and utilization of technology to minimize impacts. However, the need for increased regulatory compliance and responsible oil and gas operations to prevent impacts on food security and climate change cannot be overemphasized.
Dr. John Aondoaseer Jia is a , Safety and Environment specialist with over 25 years hands-on Oil and Gas experience.
Email: aseerjia@yahoo.com; +2348027338844
