The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation has announced that its plan to grow the country’s crude oil reserves to 40 billion barrels by the year 2020 received a boost with the execution of a tripartite agreement in Abuja on Thursday.
According to the corporation, the agreement, which is between the NNPC/FIRST Exploration and Production Joint Venture and Schlumberger, is meant for the development of the Anyalu and Madu fields in the Niger Delta under Oil Mining Licences 83 and 85, offshore Nigeria.
It stated that under the agreement, Schlumberger would provide the over $700m development cost of the fields, which would generate 193 million barrels of crude oil into the current reserves of 37.2 billion barrels, and an additional 800 billion cubic feet of gas into the nation’s proven gas reserves, which currently stand at 197 trillion cubic feet.
A statement by the corporation’s spokesperson, Mr. Ndu Ughamadu, noted that in terms of daily production, the fields would yield 50,000 barrels of crude oil per day and 120 million standard cubic feet of gas per day by early 2019.
Speaking at the signing ceremony, the Group Managing Director, NNPC, Dr. Maikanti Baru, said the approach to funding JV operations in response to the challenging economic environment was aligned wholly with the government’s aspiration to increase crude oil and gas production, reserves growth and monetisation of the nation’s enormous gas resources.
He said the projected increase in production of gas would come in handy as the corporation strived to sustain the supply of gas to the existing power plants as well as the planned power projects billed to come on board within the period.
The Managing Director, FIRST E&P, Ademola Adeyemi-Bero, who signed on behalf of the firm, said the partnership between the NNPC/FIRST E&P JV and Schlumberger would infuse a novel asset development model, which would combine FIRST E&P’s local knowledge and market position as an indigenous operating company with Schlumberger’s financing and broad technical capabilities.
On his part, the Vice President, Schlumberger, Patrick Schorn, traced the advent of the multinational oil fields service company in Nigeria to the first commercial oil find in Oloibiri when Schlumberger played a role in Shell’s drilling effort.
