TITLE:
Closing the Loop: A Comprehensive Circular Economy Roadmap for Nigeria and Ghana’s Petrochemical Sector
AUTHORS:
Philip Junior Yinbil, Justine Justice Apegase Atarah, Lord Kwame Segbeawu, Roland Victor Agbogbo
KEYWORDS:
Circular Economy, West Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Petrochemical Industry, Gas Flaring, Industrial Symbiosis, Plastic Pollution, Waste Mapping
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Yangtze Oil and Gas,
Vol.11 No.4,
September
4,
2026
ABSTRACT: The West African petrochemical industry is a primary driver of regional economic growth but contributes disproportionately to environmental degradation through gas flaring, fugitive emissions, and plastic pollution. This study develops a Circular Economy (CE) roadmap for Nigeria and Ghana’s petrochemical sector, the two economies for which sufficiently granular flaring, refining, and waste data are available in the reviewed literature. Evidence was assembled through a systematic literature review (SLR) of 59 peer-reviewed and institutional sources published between 2013 and 2025, combined with a structured comparative policy analysis benchmarking Nigerian and Ghanaian regulatory instruments against the European Union’s Circular Economy Action Plan (CEAP). Waste and emission hotspots were prioritized using a multi-criteria synthesis of reported loss volume, monetary value, health/environmental impact, and policy salience (Section 2). Results show that current regulatory frameworks exhibit “isomorphic mimicry,” where policies exist in form but lack enforcement mechanisms compared to global standards. A structured barrier analysis further identifies fossil fuel subsidies as a major market distortion hindering the competitiveness of secondary raw materials. Based on a back-casting framework, we propose a three-phase intervention strategy: short-term gas-to-power utilization, medium-term industrial symbiosis, and long-term chemical recycling. A bottom-up, order-of-magnitude calculation (Section 3.4) indicates that currently quantifiable waste streams alone, flared gas, recoverable flaring fines, and divertible plastic waste represent on the order of US$ 2 - 3 billion in annual secondary-market value, with additional but currently unquantified value in sludge and spent-catalyst recovery. We conclude that transitioning to circularity offers Nigeria and Ghana a dual dividend: mitigating climate risk while unlocking substantial secondary-material value, conditional on closing the financing, infrastructure, and governance gaps identified below.