THE NATION TUESDAY, JUNE 26, 2012
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ENERGY
‘Nigeria’s gas discoveries are opportunistic‘ T
HE Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) has said that all gas discoveries in Nigeria were made in the process of exploring for crude oil and that there has not been any absolute effort to exploring for gas despite the huge gas resources in the country. The Director of Department of Petroleum Resources, Mr. Osten Olorunsola disclosed this when the
By Emeka Ugwuanyi
members of House of Representatives Committee on Gas paid a visit to the agency’s headquarters in Lagos as part of their oversight function. The DPR chief said that Nigeria in terms of gas reserves ranks 8th in the world and number one in Africa but noted that “all natural gas discoveries are incidental to
exploration for crude oil. “Nigeria’s gas reserves endowment may be up to 600 trillion cubic feet (tcf), which is the reason the country is often described as a gas province with little oil.” He said that high proportion of natural gas accumulation is concentrated in the Niger Delta; and substantial discoveries have been made in the deep offshore area adding that exploration efforts in
the Benue Trough, Chad Basin and Anambra Basin show that the inland basins have potential to add to national gas resource volumes. He told the committee that the DPR is not relenting in its efforts to creating as much revenues from gas as oil as well as address environmental issues and end gas flaring. The agency, Olorunsola noted is working with the operator companies and other stakeholders to develop domestic market and create new industries out of the old oil industry. “Similar to oil, the sector aspires to grow the gas resource base aggressively to catalyze growth of the wider national economy,” he added. He, however, noted that as a result of undue bureaucracy, gas flares down progresses slowly in addition to lack of robust legislative and commercial frame works for gas as in oil, which accounts for the underdeveloped domestic market for gas. He called for inadequate funding of the sector and the need to reverse the current inadequate gas transmission and distribution infrastructure and insecurity in the Niger Delta. On the strategic intervention needed in the gas sector, Olorunsola noted the importance of the implementation of major gas grid infrastructure to enable delivery of gas to power and other end users, implementing the com-
mercial framework for gas, putting in place a transitional framework to facilitate gas access in the short to medium term, particularly for the power sector, facilitate the passage of the Petroleum Industry Bill and initiate aggressive gas exploration to discover more gas reserves. It is imperative to step up gas exploration, production and utilization because of the nature of the global oil market where prices continue to swing. The President of GWEST LLC Washington DC, United States, Paul Michael Wihbey, said: “Nigeria now finds itself at the crossroads between geopolitical determinants on oil pricing upon which its revenue calculations are determined and fundamental changes in the global oil market stemming from the successful application of new cost-effective technologies that have brought, and are bringing, new supplies of unconventional oil and gas to consumers. These sources include gas and oil shale, oil sands, ultra deep water, and offshore presale fields.” He said that International Energy Agency (IEA) said that demand for gas in European Union to increase 18 percent over the next 20 years and seven percent will come from Middle East and North Africa, MENA/Qatar, adding that it is time for Nigeria to plan to position itself and take advantage of the development and market.
76 oil wells: Akwa Ibom faults Cross River’s claims •Lawal Taofeek ,Manager ,Corporate Affairs, Nipco Plc (right) receiving a CSR service excellence award in education from Apapa Local Government Chairma, Hon. Ayodeji Joseph at a ceremony to honour Nipco while Miss Ogechi Nwosu (centre) a pupil of the adopted school - Apapa Primary school , watches with admiration.
Oil firms evacuate workers from GoM
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IL companies operating the Gulf of Mexico (GoM) have begun to evacuate their workers the oil gulf as tropical storm Debby strengthens. Dow Jones newswire said that Anadarko Petroleum Corporation, Marathon Oil Corporation, and Murphy Oil Corporation are evacuating all nonessential personnel from their Gulf of Mexico operations as the likelihood of a tropical storm in the region increases, the companies. Removing nonessential employees is generally the first step in preparing for the onset of a tropical cyclone. BP PLC, Chevron Corporation, Royal Dutch Shell PLC and other oil and gas companies operate oil rigs and platforms staffed with thousands of workers in the Gulf. The National Hurricane Centre
said a large weather system near the northern coast of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula has a 70 percent chance of becoming a tropical storm during the next 48 hours. The system is expected to travel into the northern Gulf area before veering off, although forecasters disagree on the direction it would go, said Michael Brennan, senior hurricane specialist at the National Hurricane Centre. “It’s a large system already,” Mr. Brennan said. “It could go more eastward toward the Florida panhandle, but others think it will go more westward toward the Texas coast.” Anadarko operates the Independence Hub, a cluster of 11 gas fields about 120 miles southeast of Biloxi, Miss., that produced nearly 10 percent of total Gulf natural gas in 2010. In all, Anadarko produced
Experts differ on oil production increase •Continued from page 47
pressed worry about the declining fortunes of the Nigerian petroleum industry and called for quick passage of the Petroleum Industry Bill to mitigate the slide. In his keynoted address, Paul Michael Wihbey, President of GWEST LLC Washington DC and a visiting scholar at Emerald Energy Institute titled: Strategic developments in the Middle East and implications for the Nigerian oil industry highlighted the huge opportunity costs and market share for Nigerian oil and gas. But he noted that Nigeria for instance has declined from being the third largest exporter of crude oil to the
United States, to being the sixth as of February this year, with volumes falling from over one million in the late 1990s to just 350,000 barrels in February. He attributed the decline to factors ranging from uncertainties in the Nigerian environment as a result of the stalled reform law, to new advances like shale oil and “fracking,” which have made available over one million barrels a day in areas that had stopped producing oil in the US. Wihbey also pointed out that Nigeria was not doing enough to achieve its production potential and was in essence committing economic mistake.
about 157,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day in the Gulf in 2010. “If the weather appears to move in the direction of any of our facilities, we are prepared to immediately remove all workers and safely shut in production,” Anadarko said in a bulletin on its Website announcing the removal of nonessential employees. Marathon Oil said production continues at its Gulf of Mexico wells, which produced 34 million barrels of oil equivalent a day in 2011. Murphy, which operates the Thunder Hawk, Medusa and Frontrunner platforms in the Gulf, is also removing nonessential employees from the area. “We are monitoring the storm closely,” Murphy spokesman Barry Jeffery said. “There has been no impact on operations.” Apache Corporation, Chevron Corporation, ConocoPhillips and Royal Dutch Shell said they are monitoring the situation but not yet evacuating employees. Other companies’ plans weren’t immediately known. Tropical storms and hurricanes can be disruptive to the U.S. Gulf’s massive energy infrastructure. Gulf of Mexico federal offshore production accounts for 29 percent of oil and 12 percent of gas production in the U.S., down from about 30 percent for oil and 17 percent for gas in 2005, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. As of March, federal offshore production from the Gulf was 1.4 million barrels of oil per day and 4.4 billion cubic feet of gas per day, down from its peak of 1.7 million barrels of oil a day and 6.3 billion cubic feet of gas per day in 2010.
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OON after some people who claim to be indigenes of the ceded Bakassi peninsular to Cameroon had protested in Cross River State over the ownership of the 76 oil wells, the people of Mbo Local Government Area of Akwa Ibom State, have strongly condemned the protest describing it as uncalled for and part of an orchestrated propaganda aimed at confusing some members of the public. On Thursday last week, a group of people reportedly staged a peaceful demonstration in Calabar, Cross River State Capital over the disputed 76 oil wells which the Supreme Court is billed to deliver judgment on July 10, 2012. In a statement, the Commissioner for Information and Communications, Akwa Ibom State, Aniekan Umanah, said a socio-cultural group in Mbo local government area of Akwa Ibom State, the Ibaka Development Organisation (IDO) , reacting to the protest in Uyo, observed that the demonstration by the purported indigenes of Bakassi was a cheap blackmail sponsored to whip sentiments ahead of the Supreme Court ruling on the case instituted by the Cross River State Government. The Chairman of the Ibaka Development Organisation, Engr. Asuquo Ating told newsmen that the protest was unwarranted since the facts of the ownership of the oil wells are clear and locates the wells within Akwa Ibom territory. He reasoned that since the case is still in court pending its final determination, it was totally wrong for the people to start making unnecessary comments as ‘with the assumption that such could attempt to influence the proceedings of the court.’ Ating recalled that the Supreme Court had in 2004 decided in a similar case brought by Cross River State that the state was no longer a littoral state with the ceding of Bakassi peninsular to Cameroon and therefore cannot benefit from the 13 percent derivation funds. He said those that demonstrated
were not Nigerians as the said group still parading themselves as indigenes of Bakassi were stopped from participating in the last 2011 general elections in the country. Ating stressed that the people of Cross River State should be thankful to Akwa Ibom State for allowing more than N600 million to be drawn monthly from the allocation of the Akwa Ibom State government and paid to Cross River State Government under the guise of ‘effect of oil exploration on the environment’ and wondered why the people of the area are trading ‘half truths.’ On the status of the puported Bakassi indigenes, Ating argued that the issue of Bakassi returnees should be of greater concern to Akwa Ibom State than any one else pointing out that since the peninsular was ceded to Cameroon about 10 years ago, the brunt of managing returnees had been of greater concern to Akwa Ibom who had larger number of citizens residing there. According to him, there was no need to heat up the polity through irrelevant demonstrations as it was not going to affect the position or decision of the court of the case. A source close to the legal team of the Akwa Ibom State in the Supreme Court said the state government is relying mostly on the judgement earlier delivered by the same Supreme Court in the case of Attorney General of Cross River State Versus Attorney General of the Federation. In the said judgment, the Supreme Court had held inter alia that “in considering the merit of the plaintiff’s case, it is important to bear in mind the effect of the judgment of International Court of Justice date October 10th, 2002 ...with the result that Cross River no longer has a seaward boundary. “In effect Akwa Ibom is contending that with the complete handover of the Bakassi peninsula to Cameroon in 2008 marked the collapse of the negotiations and fundamentally altered the equation.”