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ECONOMY: More bad news as NNPC laments depleting oil and gas reserves

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ECONOMY: More bad news as NNPC laments depleting oil and gas reserves

For a nation which economy is already officially in recession due mainly to reduced revenue generation, this is not good news.

 

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, on Sunday lamented that the nation’s crude oil and gas reserves were fast depleting, which may add to the nation’s economic woes.

 

Group Managing Director (GMD), NNPC, Dr. Maikanti Baru, made this known when the Nigerian Association of Petroleum Explorationists (NAPE) hosted him to a dinner in Abuja.

 

According to him, the country’s current reserves level can only sustain production for 35 years if nothing is done to remedy the situation.

 

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 disclosed that the national average oil production for 2016 of 1.9 million barrels is low mainly due to oil infrastructure vandalism.

He also called on 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, which he said had become expedient in this era of low oil prices and security challenges.

 

Read also: Nigeria’s economy may slip into depression –Dangote, MAN

 

The NNPC boss painted a gloomy picture of the country’s drive for industrialization which risks being truncated, as 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.

 

He further lamented 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, 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.

 

He however 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.”

 

On frontier exploration, Baru said 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.

 

Speaking earlier, NAPE President, Mr. Nosa Omorodion, said the association was ready to support NNPC in its drive to grow reserves towards increased production in all the frontier basins.

 

 

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