The Nigerian National Petroleum
Corporation, NNPC, has painted a very gloomy fortune for Nigeria’s
economy, as it disclosed that the country’s crude oil and gas reserves
were fast depleting.
The NNPC which made the statement in
Abuja on Monday, October 3, 2016 appealed to oil and gas exploration
companies, professionals and other stakeholders to focus on increasing
the nation’s oil and gas reserve base to match national aspirations to
increase oil production.
Group managing director of the NNPC,
Maikanti Baru, who disclosed this when the Nigerian Association of
Petroleum Explorationists, NAPE, hosted him in Abuja, also expressed
readiness of the NNPC to partner with stakeholders in the oil and gas
industry to grow the nation’s fast depleting reserves in order to
increase productivity in the petroleum sector.
It was also revealed that the country’s
drive for industrialization risks being truncated, as Baru stated that
the country’s aspirations were to increase oil production to four
million barrels per day and meet gas demand of 15 billion standard cubic
feet per day, bscfd, by 2020, required for industrialization and
consumption.
His Words:
“Our national gas demand forecast to
year 2020, domestic plus export, indicates a rapid growth to 15 billion
Standard Cubic Feet per day (bscfd), meaning current reserves level can
only sustain that production for 35 years, if we do not increase the
2bscfd gas reserves base which require three trillion cubic feet (tcf)
to replace production yearly.”
“Less than three per cent of all oil
wells drilled in the Niger Delta Basin, both onshore and swamp, were
deeper than 15,000 feet, adding that a greater number of these wells had
not gone beyond the 10,000 feet as a high pressure regime seemed to be a
limiting factor.
“Some of our earlier drilled
non-commercial holes could be turned around if we deploy requisite
technologies; we need to change our perspective of risk as technology is
advancing.”
“The 2016 national average oil
production of 1.9 million barrels was low, partly due to oil
infrastructure vandalism. There’s a need for stakeholders to share data
and use common available resources to reduce cost of operations in the
area of rig-sharing, vessel sharing and synergy in projects development.
This had become even expedient in this era of low oil prices and
security challenges.
“The NNPC was progressing in exploration
efforts in the Chad Basin, the Benue trough and other frontier basins
to shore up the reserve base of the country.
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