What changed
Nigeria’s anti-flaring law remains weakly enforced nearly five years after it was enacted, according to the second and final part of an investigation published on 2 October 2026. Regulatory delays and gaps in methane measurement have left communities near affected oil and gas operations exposed to continuing emissions.
The central failure is not a new law or a new announcement. It is the distance between Nigeria’s legal promise and what the National Upstream Regulatory Commission has enforced and measured in practice.
Why it matters
A law cannot protect communities from pollution that regulators do not reliably measure or act on. Here, weak enforcement and incomplete methane data create a blind spot: people remain exposed, while the scale of the emissions and the response to them remain unclear.
That makes the regulator’s next steps important. If the National Upstream Regulatory Commission closes the measurement gaps and turns the anti-flaring law into consistent enforcement, communities could finally see the law operate as intended. If delays continue, the five-year-old rule risks remaining more visible on paper than in the air around oil and gas operations.
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