By Michael Eboh

The Association of Inland Basin States of Northern Nigeria (APIBONN) has accused the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, of frustrating the development and exploration of oil in the inland basins across the country, specifically in the Northern part of the country.

Addressing newsmen in Abuja, Mr. Yabagi Sani , Interim Executive Secretary, APIBONN, stated that efforts of the NNPC towards the development of the inland basins, had over the years yielded no meaningful result.

According to him, the perceived exploration activities of the Frontier Exploration Services (FES) Department in the National Petroleum Investment Management Services (NAPIMS) Division of the NNPC, remained very opaque, while many attempts by critical stakeholders to make inputs have been severally and severely rebuffed. He said, “On the other hand, the Department of Petroleum Resources, DPR, had been cooperative with the efforts of other stakeholders, NNPC, like in all its activities keeps everybody in the dark on her actions with no motion.

“NNPC-FES gets billions of dollars budgetary allocations for exploration of the inland basins with no results and continuous budgetary allocations year-in-year-out. NNPC is not known to have made any significant success in her exploration programs throughout the history of her establishment, even in the prolific Niger Delta.”

He further stated that the off hand attitude towards exploration in the inland basins in the North, had given governments in the region cause for concern, with the governments of Sokoto, Niger, Plateau and Gombe States making significant investments on the exploration of some of these frontier basins in their domain.

As a result of the involvement of the northern states governments, Sani disclosed that significant data have been generated on the basis of which these basins have been hugely de-risked. “Knowing full well that petroleum matters come under the Exclusive Legislative List, these state governments have tried to interface with NNPC through the Ministry of Petroleum Resources on the data generated but as aforementioned, rebuffed,” he noted.

He maintained that for over 25 years, it had been a well-known fact that the 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 Basin, Bida Basin and the Northern Anambra Basin.

He lamented that while Nigeria continues to play politics and employ lukewarm attitude to exploration of oil and gas in Nigeria’s frontier basins in the North, other countries’ frontier basins with similar characteristics had been successfully explored and presently producing.

He listed such successes as the Jubilee field in Ghana, even though offshore; Anza in Kenya; Termit in Niger; Bogor and Doba in Chad; Muglad in Sudan, and virtually all over Africa, such as Uganda, Tanzania, Mauritania, among others. He also advocated that the rapid development of the frontier basins in the North should be part of the Federal Government’s outlined ‘34 priority projects’ in 2016.

To this end, he called on the National Assembly to quickly pass this bill into law to replace the FES Department in the NAPIMS Division of the NNPC and which sought to provide for the establishment of a stand-alone agency to explore new hydrocarbon deposits (oil and gas finds) in the Frontier Basins in northern Nigeria.

He said: “In the interim, before the passage of the proposed National Frontiers Basins Exploration Agency Bill, any further budgetary allocation to frontier basins exploration this year and subsequently must take into account refund of the cost incurred so far by some state governments in exchange for valuable data generated.

“Nigerians are all stakeholders in the oil and gas enterprise; there is therefore no reason why there should not be continuous collaboration and interface between NNPC and critical stakeholders such as APIBONN, at the minimum for technical audit of generated data on both sides and designing the way forward.”