Experts in the oil and gas sector have commended the Federal Government for the new oil discovery in North-Eastern part of the country.
The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) had on Friday announced the discovery of hydrocarbon deposits in the Kolmani River II Well on the Upper Benue Trough, Gongola Basin, in the North-Eastern part of the country.
Before the seemingly fruitless search for oil in the North-East was suspended a few years ago, over $3 billion had been spent on the project.
In 2013, while serving as chairman of the Northern Nigeria Economic Summit, Professor Jerry Gana disclosed that N27billion was spent on oil and gas exploration in the Lake Chad Basin at that time with additional $340million budgeted.
The search for oil took about 33 years before the first sign of success was discovered in the night of October 10, 2019.
Speaking on the commercial viability of the discovery, the National President of Nigeria Association of Petroleum Explorationists (NAPE) Ajibola Oyebamiji, stated that, “It is good news to the industry. It shows that with advancement of technology, a lot can still be done in the other basins in Nigeria. There are other opportunities in the Chad basin that are currently being exploited.
“The drilled well is an exploratory well and the gas you saw being flared was the associated gas being flared during exploration because without doing that, they may lose the entire well to pressure. So they have to flare the gas and be able to take the oil. It would have cost several millions of dollars but I cannot be specific. The reserves will be very significant and it is of huge commercial quantity.”
However, the immediate past President of NAPE, who is the Managing Director of Degeconek Limited, Abiodun Adesanya, argued that the discovery is huge for the geoscience and petroleum industry in Nigeria.
“It is huge because yet again we have been able to successfully prove that another sedimentary basin, apart from the Niger Delta, Anambra Basin, and apart from Dahomey Basin, have been able to confirm to us that petroleum system is in existence. So what that simply means is that there is a justification for going there to look for oil now. There is going to be increased activities in that direction,” he said.
Source: The Tribune
