THE Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) research and development (RD) department is partnering with US-based Halliburton Corporation to identify viable crude oil in the Chad basin using a new technique known as the Neftex solution.
NNPC group general manager, RD, Bola Afolabi said on July 18 that this new technique will be able to pinpoint the exact exploration locations for drilling of commercial oil in the basins and this would occur over the course of 18 months. Afolabi said the Halliburton Neftex solution would provide a geophysical mapping structure and aid to identify prolific basins in Nigeria.
The group managing director (GMD) of the NNPC, Maikanti Baru, also said at the 6th Sustainability in the Extractive Industries’ (SITEI) conference in Abuja, on July19 that Nigeria’s crude oil production has risen to 2.2million barrels per day (bpd). Baru said the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company (NPDC) had already increased production from 15,000 to 210,000 thousand bpd as of June 2017 and has attributed this growth to the peace in the Niger Delta. Baru added that the NNPC aims to increase and sustain the country’s oil reserves from 2.5 to 3 million bpd in the next few years.
Speaking at the same conference, the minister of state for petroleum, Ibe Kachikwu announced that Nigeria would explore crude oil sale possibilities to the African markets. Kachikwu said there is difficulty capturing the American and European market as demand is fast declining, thus leaving the African and Asian markets. Therefore, the African market must be captured in terms of contract awards, whether in crude, investment or other formulations and this would be discussed at the 19th conference of the African oil producers to be held this week.
Kachikwu also said that Nigeria must endeavour to reduce production costs to about $15 per barrel through the implementation of the new National Fiscal Policy and cost reduction initiatives. This will help in developing the country’s oil capacity to be competitive in the continent and also ensure majority of the volumes of oil and gas demands of the continent come from her oil fields.