Mohammed Shosanya
18 November 2008
Lagos — The Federal Government has urged stake holders in the nation's oil and gas industry to discover more oil so as to enable Nigeria meet its 40billion barrels reserve target by the year 2010.
Minister of State for Energy (Petroleum) Mr. Odein Ajumogobia, who disclosed this yesterday at the 26th Annual International Conference of the National Association of Petroleum Explorationists (NAPE), also charged operators not to allow uncertainties in the global market to distract them from exploring more oil reserves.
He said that oil firms had not make significant efforts to grow the oil and gas reserves, which, if not properly addressed, would obstruct the country's decision to increase oil production.
He further charged oil firms to replenish and grow the country's reserve base through exploration of all the nation's seven basins, and urged them to employ all available geo-technologies to de-risk the prospectivity and step up exploration activity in the inland basins.
According to him: "I must remark that there has been noappreciable growth in Nigeria's oil and gas reserves in the last five years despite the known potential both onshore and in the deep offshore.
Uncommonly known to many is the fact that Nigeria has seven sedimentary basins of which Niger Delta is most active and prospective for oil and gas."
Also speaking, the President of NAPE Dr. Kingsley Ojoh said Nigeria has untapped crude oil resources of over 40 billion barrels, which according to him, exist in South Western Nigeria, particularly in Ondo State and parts of Ogun State.
Questioning why the Federal Government for placed heavy crude oil such as bitumen in the Ministry of Solid Minerals, which has made the government not to address the issue quite seriously, Ojoh said heavy crude oil should be in the Ministry of Petroleum Resources to enable the oil firms meet its crude oil expectations.
"Nigeria should seriously borrow a leaf from Canada, which has heavy crude reserves in Alberta, and Venezuela, which also has heavy crude in Orinoco, where such deposits are being tapped and upgraded into light sweet synthetic crude, thereby earning more exchange to the states.
The world challenge is to ensure continuous, affordable and reliable supply of energy.
In the past few years, NAPE has examined the challenges posed by the global demand for energy, even as the Nigerian Government has set the goal of achieving the 40 billion barrels reserves", he said.
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