The Nigerian Government is intensifying efforts to explore crude oil in Sokoto and Chad basins because of emerging new technology in oil exploration and a renewed assurance by Chinese oil explorers that there are prospects of oil discovery in the basins.
The Chinese investors, who discovered oil in the neighbouring Niger and Chad , are the new partners to the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) in the ongoing crude exploration in the Chad and Sokoto basins.
Confirming this development in a media chat in Lagos recently, the Group General Manager in charge of Group Public Affairs Division of NNPC, Dr. Levi Ajuonuma, said the corporation was optimistic of oil discovery in this current search because the technology being used was different from the previous one.
He said there were huge prospects for oil discovery in the areas because the technology for oil exploration had improved from the one used in the previous unsuccessful attempts to strike oil and gas in the two basins.
“The Chinese that found oil in Niger and Chad are the ones partnering NNPC in this current search and if the Chinese that found oil in nearby Niger and Chad can assure us that there are prospects, then there is no reason why we should not believe them,” he said.
The NNPC recently intensified exploratory activities in the pursuit of additional oil and gas reserves in the Chad area. There are also ongoing efforts to open up other prospects in Chad and the frontier basins.
Ajuonuma said that under the curent search, the NNPC New Frontier Exploration Division was working in consultation with a renowned Geophysicist and Consultant to the United Nations, Prof. Deborah Ajakaiye who is leading a team of Nigerian and foreign Geologists/Geophysicists in the search for hydrocarbon deposit in the Nigerian Frontier Inland Sedimentary Basins (NFISB).
“The search is not limited to the Chad Basin alone but covers extensive inquest in the entire Nigerian Frontier Sedimentary Basins which includes- The Anambra, Bida , Dahomey , Gongola /Yola and the Sokoto Basins alongside the Middle/Lower Benue Trough,” he said.
The NNPC had earlier abandoned the intensification of the search for oil in the Chad Basin after 23 wells were drilled without success by the International Oil Companies (IOCs).
