Financial Energy Review
…………Buhari Retained Petroleum Ministry to midwife first oil production……
Reasons have been adduced why President Mohammadu Buhari, still retains the position of the nation’s Minister of Petroleum Resources in his second term in office. Part of the reasons being that the President is not only so passionate over the developments and successes in the oil and gas industry, he is now set to midwife the first oil and gas productions from the on-going frontline explorations in the country.
Having been once in his military days, Minister of Petroleum Resources, President Buhari is said to be committed to see the first oil produced from the frontline exploration projects. Project previous administrations had given up on the possibility of striking oil and gas in a commercial quantity. Financial Energy Review gathered that in couple of months from now the President will announce the first commercial gas production from Gombe state in the North-East of Nigeria.
At the recent media training and workshop organized in Lagos by the Nigerian Association of Petroleum Explorationists (NAPE) an official of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) Mr. Alex Tarka clarified the involvement of NNPC in the on-going exploration in the frontline states. According to him the President has given his full support to the exploration and production of oil and gas in the frontline states.
Tarka who is the in-coming President of NAPE, pointed out that data so far gathered from survey and exploration indicated sizeable quantity of oil and gas reserve in this region. “the resources so far committed to the frontline exploration is not a waste” he said. However, he express displeasure over some misunderstanding that government is spending so much in the exploration of oil and gas in the frontline states with no commensurate result.
Tarka, therefore appealed to the media in assisting to inform Nigerians and the general public the expected advantages of discovering oil and gas in the frontline state. “We have used the advantage of new technologies that previous exploration expedition never had access to; that is why we are getting results now. By the time we are done the results will far outweigh the total resources so far committed to the project” Tarka said.
Collaborating the assertions of the NNPC official, the current President of NAPE, Mr. Ajibola Oyebamiji said the discovery of oil and gas in the frontline states will go a long way to increase the nation’s oil reserve and further help Nigeria to reach the target of 4 million barrel per day from the current 2 million barrel per. “More so, the gas that has been discovered in Gombe state will further reduce the cost of piping gas from the Niger Delta to the North-East state to power electricity generation in that region” he said.
According to him, the current exploration of oil and gas in the frontline states is part of the result of sedimentary survey of the nation oil deposit. According to the NAPE President Nigeria has seven sedimentary oil deposits covering the entire country. Niger Delta deposit, according to Oyebamiji, is the ‘youngest’ and has more gas reserve than the other six sedimentary oil deposit.
He pointed out that this year’s NAPE annual International Conference and Exhibition holding in Lagos with the theme:” EXPANDING NIGERIA’S PETROLEUM LANDSCAPE: DIGITALIZATION, INNOVATION AND EMERGING NEW TECHNOLOGIES” will explain more on the nation’s untapped petroleum resources and the need to increase Nigeria’s oil reserve and the conference will further throwing more lights on the huge opportunity in the nation’s untapped gas resources.
