Oil find in Lake Chad basin

Nigerians got unusually cheering news recently when the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) announced that it “may well be on the verge of a significant oil find” in the Lake Chad basin. NNPC’s Group Managing Director and Minister of State for Petroleum Dr. Ibe Kachikwu said the news was hinged on seismic data generated from […]

Nigerians got unusually cheering news recently when the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) announced that it “may well be on the verge of a significant oil find” in the Lake Chad basin. NNPC’s Group Managing Director and Minister of State for Petroleum Dr. Ibe Kachikwu said the news was hinged on seismic data generated from the Chad basin. He said, “There are signs from the latest 3D seismic studies that oil may well be very close to being found now in Lake Chad after many years of trials.” He described the potential find as “very key.” “I am optimistic that by the end of the year we should be able to announce something major on this,” he said.
According to the minister, NNPC is injecting a lot of energy into oil exploration in the Chad area to ensure success. This is a welcome development. Even though the search for oil in Nigeria’s Chad basin which is adjacent to Niger Republic, Cameroon and Chad has been on for three decades, this is the first time that NNPC is making such a cheering statement. The matter of oil prospecting in areas outside the Niger Delta has been steeped in politics with various administrations promising to step up efforts in that direction, without serious results.
Between 2011 and 2013 the Federal Government through the chairman of the Northern Economic Summit Prof Jerry Gana said that it approved $240 million to facilitate oil and gas exploration activities in the Lake Chad Basin and other areas of the North including the Benue Trough, Bidda Basin and the Sokoto-Rima Basin. A report at that time said there was an estimated 100 billion cubic metres of oil deposits beneath Lake Chad but nothing was heard of it since then. In 2006, government handed out licenses to China’s state-run National Petroleum Corporation to explore four blocks in the Lake Chad basin, but shortly after that hopes of stepping up oil exploration in the Lake Chad Basin were thwarted by the rise of Boko Haram. Technical and support personnel involved in the search had to flee the region. NNPC’s geologists also shunned the area. Exploration however resumed in the area in 2013 and former Vice President Namadi Sambo said then that “oil prospecting in the Lake Chad Basin is yielding promising results and may lead to commercial exploitation of oil and gas this year.”
Three blocks were identified for potential oil and gas exploration and hopes were that exploration work would begin by late 2013 or early 2014. Sambo’s assurances however went the way of others. This time around though, it appears that NNPC may indeed be up to something although some skeptics think it could all be politics because a Northerner is the president. On our part we believe that Kachikwu will not lend his name to political chicanery and we urge him to redouble efforts while we await the expected major announcement next month.
Thankfully, the military is working hard to end the Boko Haram insurgency so that explorers and investors could return to the area. The advantages of oil find in the Chad Basin cannot be overemphasized. It will increase the nation’s earnings in view of the location while providing employment for the thousands of youths in the restive region. It will also transform the area where poverty and unemployment have been key factors in the insurgency.
However, it is important for the NNPC and all relevant parties to be apolitical about this matter and to approach it with the highest sense of professionalism. Geology is not guided by the federal character of Nigeria. The effort to locate and explore oil in the Chad Basin is not being pursued for geopolitical balancing but because oil has been found in contiguous and geologically similar regions of Niger Republic, Chad and Cameroon.  We therefore urge all stakeholders to work with NNPC to ensure the actualization of this project and after that, they should also look into the possibility of exploration in other areas where such hydrocarbon deposits are likely to exist.