Following the recession currently bedeviling Nigeria, the Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, Maikanti Baru, has raised alarm over the depletion of the nation’s crude oil and gas reserves.
Baru, made the disclosure when he was hosted by the Nigerian Association of Petroleum Explorationists, NAPE, in Abuja, according to a statement released yesterday.
The NNPC boss appealed to oil and gas exploration companies, professionals and other stakeholders to focus on increasing the nation’s oil and gas reserve base.
According to Baru, the NNPC was ready to partner stakeholders in the oil and gas industry to grow the nation’s fast depleting reserves in order to increase productivity in the petroleum sector.
He said, “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.”
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.
Lamenting that 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, Baru stated 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.
He stated that “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.”
In a related development, former Group Managing Directors, GMD, of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, has warned that if left unattended to, the current challenges plaguing Nigeria’s oil and gas sector was capable of leading to its total collapse.
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