Proposing a legal framework for decommissioning of oil and gas installation in Nigeria

Oil and Gas exploration and exploitations have been ongoing over the past fifty years in Nigeria from the first major discovery of oil in commercial quantity in Oloibiri, Bayelsa State in 1956. Decommissioning is a tedious and complicated process which needs strict laws and regulations to ensure environmental protection among other issues. When an oil and gas installation reaches the end of its productive life, the need to remove such installations from the environment becomes necessary, hence the importance for the existence of national laws and regulations. The paper therefore examines Nigeria’s treaty obligations under the Geneva Convention on the Continental Shelf (GCS) 1958, The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) 1982 and the London Dumping Convention 1972 among others. The paper adopts the doctrinal method through the use of Statutes, Cases, Treaties and Conventions to buttress the argument. The paper finds that the absence of a national legislation on decommissioning in Nigeria has led to failure in provision of regulations in dealing with the complexities associated with decommissioning. It concludes by making recommendations for Nigeria to ensure the implementation of these international legal instruments through the process of domestication under the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended) 1999 to bring into existence a national legislation.