LA­GOS, Nige­ria-Roy­al Dutch Shell PLC is con­sid­er­ing $4 bil­lion worth of on­shore projects in Nige­ria to help cap­ture nat­ur­al gas cur­rent­ly burn­ing at oil wells that con­tribute to glob­al warm­ing and can sick­en those liv­ing near­by, the com­pa­ny's CEO said.

CEO Pe­ter Vos­er al­so said yes­ter­day that Shell's oil pro­duc­tion rose to about 800,000 bar­rels a day in 2011, up af­ter years of mil­i­tant ac­tiv­i­ty in the coun­try's Niger Delta cut in­to out­put. Vos­er made the com­ments Wednes­day in Lon­don at a con­fer­ence for Shell, long the dom­i­nant for­eign oil com­pa­ny op­er­at­ing in crude-rich Nige­ria. He said the in­vest­ments in nat­ur­al gas would sup­port ef­forts by the com­pa­ny to cut down on the gas fires, known as flar­ing.

En­vi­ron­men­tal­ists de­scribe flar­ing as one of the largest sources of green­house gas­es which cause glob­al warm­ing. Those liv­ing in the Niger Delta say the burn­ing con­tributes to acid rain and caus­es res­pi­ra­to­ry ill­ness­es. Flar­ing leaves their fish­ing vil­lages bathed in light at all hours and kills the fish liv­ing among the creeks and swamps of the rough­ly 51,800-square kilo­me­tre (20,000-square mile) delta.

Nige­ria flared off 15.2 bil­lion cu­bic me­ters of nat­ur­al gas in 2010 alone, sec­ond on­ly to Rus­sia, ac­cord­ing to World Bank es­ti­mates. Oil pro­duc­tion at oil fields run by Shell's lo­cal sub­sidiary, in part­ner­ship with the state-run Niger­ian Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um Corp., has risen in re­cent years as well. How­ev­er, Vos­er said the se­cu­ri­ty sit­u­a­tion re­mains un­cer­tain in Nige­ria, where mil­i­tants still at­tack pipelines and thieves steal crude de­spite a 2009 amnesty deal. Vos­er said gun­men killed two con­trac­tors work­ing with Shell last year.

AP