Mustapha Manga

Project Title

Mainstreaming Strategic Thinking in Policy Making for new Oil and Gas Frontiers in Nigeria through a transition to Strategic Environmental Assessment

Project Description

Despite more than six decades of oil and gas exploration in Nigeria's old frontier basin areas in the Niger Delta region, the Nigerian government launched the 2021 Petroleum Industry Act (PIA), which outlines ambitions to expand oil and gas development into new frontier basins fields that possess significant hydrocarbon resource potential. While the renewed interest in opening new frontier basins to potential hydrocarbon drilling activities has triggered accelerated government attention; however, it also sparked long-standing concerns regarding the country's strategic preparedness to plan for energy expansion, considering the constraints of project-based environmental impact assessment in addressing a complex web of cumulative effects, uncertainties and broader policy issues associated with the oil and gas development. To address the potential regional and long-term cumulative impacts of energy development in the new frontier basin areas, this study explores the potential for mainstreaming a more strategic thinking approach to planning and assessment in Nigeria's oil and gas policy sector to help drive the decision process towards more sustainable outcomes.

Informed by ideas from transition management theory, the study will apply a mixed method of quantitative and qualitative approaches that will include the administration of two survey questionnaires: one with communities who live in the oil and gas old frontier basin areas and one with EIA practitioners. In-depth interviews with policy-makers, industry, Environmental Non-governmental Organizations (ENGOs), academics and representatives from the Multi-lateral Development Organisations (MDAs) were also conducted. The research explores ways in which a strategic thinking approach to Nigeria's oil and gas policy and plan-making can be mainstreamed through environmental assessment. The study aims to develop an EIA-based transition management framework for Nigeria’s oil and gas policy sector in which the introduction of a more strategic approach to planning and environmental assessment can be feasible in order to complement the existing EIA system in supporting the hydrocarbon development transitions toward sustainability in the new frontier basin regions.