Nigeria’s state-owned NNPC Ltd. began drilling for oil and gas on Tuesday at a field with 1 billion barrels of reserves in northern Nigeria as the nation aims to produce petroleum outside of the Niger Delta for the first time.
The discovery of crude oil, gas, and condensate in commercial quantities was initially reported by NNPC Ltd in 2019 in the Kolmani region between the states of Bauchi and Gombe in northeastern Nigeria, a region that is grappling with an Islamist insurgency.
President Muhammadu Buhari said over 1 billion barrels of oil reserves and 500 billion cubic feet of gas was discovered within Kolmani Oil Prospecting Lease 809 and 810.
The Kolmani project is being developed by the NNPC, local company Sterling Global Oil, and New Nigeria Development Commission, a conglomerate owned by 19 states in northern Nigeria. No oil major is engaged.
“It is therefore to the credit of this administration that at a time when there is near zero appetite for investment in fossil energy, coupled with the location challenges, we are able attract investment of over $3 billion to this project,” Buhari said at a ceremony to start the oil project.
Nigeria has for years been searching for oil in frontier basins in the largely poor north of the country, including the Lake Chad Basin, the heartland of the Islamist insurgency.
Buhari urged the NNPC and its partners to work with local communities and draw lessons from the restive Niger Delta, where militants have in the past blown up pipelines, accusing oil companies of neglecting locals.
