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FG steps up oil search in Chad Basin

By on January 10, 2015

In the face of dwindling oil reserves, the Federal Government has said it will intensify the search for oil in the Chad Basin area.

It said the prevailing security challenges in the area would not deter it from the mission.

“In spite of the dire security situation in the Chad Basin area, the National Petroleum Investment Management Services, through our Frontier Exploration Services, continues to explore the frontier areas of Nigeria to increase oil and gas reserves,” the Group General Manager, NAPIMS, Mr. Jonathan Okehs, said in a post on the organisation’s website.

Okehs, who unveiled the plans of the agency for this year on the website, said, “At the beginning of 2014, amid global economic uncertainties, we set ambitious and laudable targets for ourselves. However, the world economy continued to plummet, giving rise to spiral inflation, which consequently resulted in high cost of running our operations.

“This obviously impacted adversely on the government’s take from both existing and new projects. As we were still grappling with the global economic instability, the price of crude oil dropped drastically due to the glut in the international oil market. All these, coupled with the incessant vandalism of our pipelines and the attendant crude oil theft, have combined to affect our production level.”

Notwithstanding these challenges, he said the country was able to maintain crude oil and condensate production at an average of 2.037 million barrels per day last year. This, he noted, showed a marginal increase from the 2013 average figure of 2.029 million bpd.

“NAPIMS has also continued to explore for new opportunities to increase our reserve base and daily production. Under the Production Sharing Contract, new green fields were discovered by some of our partners like Newcross in OPL 283, while some others have already commenced production. Other projects, such as Ofon Phase 2, are near completion with expected production of 40,000 bpd by quarter four of 2015,” he added.

In July 2014, Okehs said the multi-billion dollar Escravos gas-to-liquid plant was commissioned, while in August, the multi-billion dollar Bonga North Deepwater Project dropped its first oil and added 50,000bpd to Nigeria’s national crude production.

Investment decision for other deep-water projects like Egina and Erha North, Okehs noted, had been taken, with expected production of 200,000bpd in the 57,000bpd of oil in first quarter of 2016 and fourth quarter of 2017, respectively.

In pursuit of the Federal Government’s gas to power agenda, he said gas supply of three billion standard cubic feet per day to the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas and 750-800mmscfd to the domestic market had been maintained.

Okehs added that the latest gas project, the Alakiri AG solution, being developed by Shell Petroleum Development Company Joint Venture, was currently supplying 45mmscfd to the domestic market and would increase to over 80mmscfd by the first quarter of this year.

 

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