MONDAYBUSINESS The long wait for Bida’s first oil
Indigenes of Niger State were recently fired up about the prospect of oil production in their state following the announcement by the Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida University Research Centre that it had discovered large quantity of crude oil deposit at the Bida Basin.
Director of the research centre, Prof. Nuhu Obaje who made the disclosure at an exhibition in Lagos said that the institution had also informed the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) about its findings adding that the university was willing to assist government in further exploration of crude in the area.
Although this announcement came to many Nigerians as novel, data available showed that the prospects of crude and gas deposit at the basin had long been established. Former Governor Mu’azu Babangida Aliyu had in 2014 commissioned the same institution to carryout geophysical survey of the Bida Basin. The university found after its exploration research that there was high prospect for oil and gas there.
Daily Trust reports that aside from the dominant Niger Delta basin from where much of Nigeria’s oil is drilled, it has been established for over 20 years now that potential for commercial occurrence of oil and gas exists in the inland frontier basins of Northern Nigeria comprising the Nigerian sector of the Chad Basin, Benue Trough, Sokoto and Bida basins and the Northern Anambra Basin.
While successive governments showed lukewarm attitudes to the exploration of the frontier basins in the North, other countries' basins with charactristics as Nigrria's, like the Anza field in Kenya, Termit in Niger, Bogor and Doba in Chad, Muglad in Sudan, and many all over Africa (Uganda, Tanzania, Mauritania, etc), have been successfully explored and presently producing.
Attempts at oil exploration in the Bida Basin in the past had suffered several setbacks. The state once commissioned a Chinese firm, Shengkang Group and an estimated $10 billion oil exploration project was said to have been executed with the Chinese firm. However, nothing significant has since taken place.
Informed by the need to reduce the reliance on the Niger Delta and its vulnerability to attacks by militancy, vandalisation of pipelines President Muhammadu Buhari upon assumption of office directed the NNPC to increase the tempo on search for hydrocarbon prospects in Chad Basin and the North Eastern part of Nigeria.
Despite this, findings showed that the Niger state will have to wait longer as the NNPC is focusing attention on the Chad and Benue Trough where the corporation currently has exploration activities going on.
While some energy analysts believe that the search for crude oil in the North remains incomplete until Bida Basin, is included
Interim Executive Secretary, Association of Petroleum Inland Basins of Northern Nigeria (APIBONN), Engr. Yabagi Y. Sani, who has been involved in the Bida Basin project up to the level where it is today, said the government would continue to witness setbacks until the government sets up a stand-alone agency to explore new hydrocarbon deposits in northern Nigeria.
Engr. Sani called on the National Assembly to quickly pass the bill to provide for the establishment of the National Frontiers Basins Exploration Agency into law to replace the Frontier Exploration Services (FES) Department in the NAPIMS Division of the NNPC to execute, promote and oversee exploration activities in the inland sedimentary basins.
Secondly, he said, " the government of these states made representation to Mr. president where they asked him to consider developing the hydrocarbons in their states (frontier basin), the question is why was Niger State not there since we (Niger) have a standing committee on Bida Basin headed by Lt. Gen Wushishi and notable Nigerlites who are on that committee... why is the new administration in the state not doing anything about it.
It is not a problem of NNPC or the government because other states have worried and put pressure on government."
On his part, Professor of Petroleum Geology at the University of Nigeria Nsukka ,Prof Mosto Onuoha, said while the Bida Basin showed better prospect than the Sokoto, government over the years seemed too confortable with the Niger Delta to the neglect of other basins.
Onuoha who is also the President of the Nigeria Academy of Science said however that the crux of the problem have been funding.
He said the best way for government to go is to tie the award of blocks to the socalled lucrative areas with award of blocks to the less lucrative basins in the next bid round which could happen this year.
"This has been tried in the past but we need to encourage it. The better thing to do is to fund our exploration and the IOCs will rush and bring their resources, "