FG Losing N541b Annually for not Exploring 7 Deepwater Fields

• FG Losing N541b Annually for not Exploring 7 Deepwater Fields

A new revelation has shown that the Federal Government is losing about $1.5 billion or N541 billion annually for not exploring seven deepwater oil and gas fields that hold substantial crude oil.

The new Minister of State for Petroleum, Timipre Sylva, disclosed this during a two-day “Next Level Strategic Retreat” organised for directors of the Ministry of Petroleum Resources and heads of agencies under his purview.

The minister listed the unexplored deepwater oil fields as Bonga South West and Aparo with daily capacity of 225,000 barrels per day (bpd); Bonga North, 100,000 bpd; Bosi field, 140,000 bpd, and Bosi Satellite field phase 2,80,000 bpd.

The remaining three were Uge with 110,000 bpd capacity, Zabazaba-Etan 120,000 bpd and Nsiko field holding about 100,000 bpd.

Nigeria is losing the above figures from the deepwater fields because the Final Investment Decisions (FIDs) regarding their exploration are still pending.

Therefore about 870,000 barrels of oil are left unexplored in the listed fields due to lack of fiscal incentives, investors’ apathy in the sub-sector.

The new minister listed his priority at the retreat.

According to him, the implementation of the reduction in federal government’s stake in Joint Venture (JV) from current level to 40 percent, curbing leakages, completing gas flare commercialisation, increasing Nigeria’s oil production to about 3 million barrels per day and reducing cost of production by about five percent are some of his key plans going forward.

Also, he listed aggressive promotion of the passage of the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB), promotion of inland basin exploration activities, promotion of deep offshore exploration activities, and collaboration with private sector to aggressively increase domestic refining capacity as a priority.