65 Billion Barrels Of Oil Nigeria’s Oil Unexplored

More than 65 barrels of oil have been left unexplored due to the uncertainty in the Nigerian oil and gas investment environment, said the managing director of Total Upstream Companies in Nigeria, Elizabeth Proust.
Elizabeth made this known yesterday at the opening ceremony of the 32nd annual International Conference of the Nigerian Association of Petroleum Explorationists (NAPE) in Lagos. The theme of the conference was, “The future of hydrocarbon exploration: Drilling deeper, searching wider,” it gave opportunity for stakeholders to deliberate the decreasing investments in the Nigerian oil and gas environment.
According to Elizabeth, “There are considerable unexplored frontier basins in the deeply buried onshore, offshore and ultra-deep offshore Niger Delta of over 50 billion barrels of oil equivalent and about 10-15 billion barrels of oil equivalent in the Lagos Abrupt Margin and Upper Benue Trough.”She observed that it is unfortunate that these frontiers have been left unexplored due to the uncertainty in the industry which she said has resulted in low level of drilling activity with reserves replacement ratio of the country being “extremely low right now.“For Nigeria’s oil and gas reserves to grow and for companies to invest in exploration and development of assets, there must be a clear, fair and stable fiscal and regulatory regime that allows long term planning and investing,” said Elizabeth.
She added that “In the current situation, there is need for government authorities to be creative on incentives for exploration, otherwise reserves replacement and production will continue to decline.”The Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB), which is to show certainty in the industry and encourage investors, it is yet to be released as the bill is being passed from one assembly to another with little or no hope to become a law. Elizabeth revealed that Nigeria is no longer the preferred terrain for exploration in Africa due to the uncertainty in the industry.
She said, “There is stiff competition from East Africa with large volumes of gas discovered in Mozambique, Tanzania, Kenya and Angola.“These countries have rolled out attractive terms and incentives designed to encourage exploration.” –