Following several efforts to discover deposits of crude oil in commercial quantities in the northern part of the country, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation has commenced exploration activities in some states in the region.
In order to build up the nation’s proven oil reserve through exploration of new frontiers for oil and gas production, the federal government had been informed by the NNPC on the finishing touches to a comprehensive framework designed to herald the intensification of exploration activities in the Chad Basin.
Also determined to ensure that the latest quest for a sustainable oil find in the Chad Basin is met with success, the Minister of Petroleum Resources Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke, had directed the corporation to leave no stone unturned in its push to strike oil in the basin.
The disclosure on the fresh exploratory activities by the NNPC was made by its Group Managing Director, Mr. Andrew Yakubu, while appearing before the Senate Committee on Petroleum (Upstream) to defend the corporation’s 2014 budget.
According to the NNPC boss, the northern states where the corporation has commenced oil exploration besides the Chad Basin are Sokoto, Yola, and Niger.
He said: “There are seven other basins apart from the Chad that we are exploring. What we did last year was to acquire the aero magnetic data from the Geometric Survey Department. We have Yola, Bida, Sokoto, Dahomey and others.”
The GMD further disclosed that NNPC’s decision to undertake crude exploration in those states “was a result of an extensive geological study that was done a couple of years ago on the Chad Basin.”
He added that previous exploratory activity by the NNPC on the Chad Basins had reached phase six out of the 13 needed for oil discovery to be made.
“The data for the other basins had been acquired. It has 13 phases and we are now in phase six.”
According to Yakubu, “The projection of a daily crude production of 2.44m is realistic. However, the security challenges have affected the production. We have the capacity but we need additional investment to address the security breaches that we continue to have.”
Yakubu, reacting to the current fuel scarcity across the country shortly after the budget defence, said: “We have a full team right now in Lagos. Last week, the team was in Abuja. We went round the clock to clean it up, to get strategic reserve released to the stations and we are able to reduce the fuel queues.
“We shifted to Lagos at the weekend but we have injected quite a lot into the Lagos market. All the marketers, the DPR, the PPRA, NNPC, and the PPMC have a very strong team out there to ensure that the deliveries are made. Offshore, we have some vessels that had not been offloaded into the tank farms in Lagos and a lot of supplies have gone into most filling stations.”
