Prospect of crude oil discovery in the Chad, Niger basins are high —NAPE President

In this interview with OLATUNDE DODONDAWA, the President of Nigerian Association of Petroleum Explorationists (NAPE) , Abiodun Adesanya, speaks on the motives for diversification from oil and the gains and pains of exploration prospects in frontier basins. Excerpts.

 

What’s your view on the frontier basin exploration prospects?

Before you can say you want to go and explore an area, firstly, it must be recognised as a sedimentary basin and if it is recognised, then you can then say yes, I need to go and look at this area.

Secondly, there are data to be obtained,  and when those data are available and you know it’s a sedimentary basin, then you progress. Don’t forget, finding oil in Nigeria started long time ago; it was found in 1956 and production started in 1958.

So if you look at the years, from Nigerian bitumen of 1908 to 1956 that is the time it took for oil to be found. The science is being refined same as the technology. The way in which we make these findings is being shortened. If you go to Ghana, you could make the same comment of ‘don’t you think we are wasting time looking for oil and gas’?

But eventually they made a commercial discovery and they are producing. The same with Senegal, Kenya, Uganda and Mozambique. All have their history of when they started searching and when it was found. The most important thing is that it is a gradual process and some certain conditions must be available ultimately before you say you found oil and gas.

The knowledge of those conditions may not be there at the beginning, but if you go about it in a very systematic way, you will get. It’s not in all cases that you may get blank as well and not also uncommon that you have a start and a stop. You access, start again and stop.

In the process, the bridges and the person searching change hands and operators change hands. The company like Tullow Oil or Ken Energy, these are exploration risk averse company, that’s their business model. They  like to go to frontier areas, and then prove it up and once they make a good discovery, then the big oil companies come up and farm it and they will reduce their equity and they will move to another basin and continue their search, that’s how they work.

Government, through the frontier exploration service of NNPC, has been the one exploring.

Mandatorily, they have to be the one to start. It is the data that is available that will attract investors to come and continue. It’s about concept and models that you are building, your ideas based on data, are those that must be acquired and evaluated in a manner that the picture will begin to emerge.

So we are at the beginning of that in the Sokoto basin, where we are going to start with field mapping exercise. The map that comes is what will determine the next steps of what to be done and the map can say you don’t need to proceed or afford to proceed, and somebody else might come years later and say they want to move forward from this.

 

But in your own opinion, is it possible they find oil?

Yes. 23 wells have been drilled in Chad basin and three in the upper Benue trough, which is Gombe, and Bauchi area. The result is a mix result. The fear in our business is not a dried well, what we will be afraid of is not having information from that dry well that will guide us, because it is a step by step process.

So, we shouldn’t be afraid of dry wells. And from dry wells, information and some learning may come from it so that next one you do won’t be a dry well. So, it is very unusual in today’s way of doing things to drill 23 wells and make a discovery.

How many wells were drilled in Ghana, Kenya or Uganda? By the time you drill one to four wells, there should be something and the critical thing is the management of the information that has been gathered. There must be harnessing the data in a thorough systematic way to give you a guidance to what you have done and not done, where you go and not go, because sometimes, you may start from the wrong side of the basin. But with carefully analysis of the data, it will lead you to the proper side of the basin.

There is justification for going because we all know from the Chadian and Niger side, there’s been commercial discovery. It is the same sedimentary basin that straddles across these  international boundaries, so we will be under-performing if we decide not to go and search on our side of the basin.

 

You are earth scientists, so why the call for diversification which may affect your activities?

Firstly, you know Nigeria has been able to produce to its capacity. Of course, a lot of things were damaged at the peak of militancy attacks and we have been going bit by bit in fixing and restoring production, but we haven’t had much issues and challenges with production.

If you also will recall this year, September 2017, the production was at its peak since this problem started. Nigeria produced 2 million barrels per day and that was the highest and I think we shouldn’t lose sight of the effort of the current administration is putting by making sure that OPEC has not in any way reduced or cut our production. I think it is a very commendable effort from the part of government to sustain our production and get us until we get to that standard of 2.2 to 3 million barrels per day.

So we also recorded some success in terms of this same vandalization issues, you will recall that the vice president and minister of state for petroleum resources did a criss-crosses around the Delta, speaking to stakeholders and I think that has resulted in the result that we have right now.

Production has been relatively steady and increasing and that’s largely contributing to the positiveness that we are witnessing in the economy.

So everything points to some light at the end of the tunnel. This year we chose the topic, “A Roadmap to Nigeria Oil and Gas, Diversifying economy”, because we anticipate that the economy of Nigeria needs to be diversified.

That has been said a number of time over and over again, but what should we be doing in the industry and that’s what we should be doing at this conference.

 

Just last year, you were clamouring for more crude oil discovery. Has anything really changed between last year and now?

From last year until this year, you may have heard that there is effort in increasing exploration activities in the frontier basin of Nigeria and this was a major point of discussion last year at the conference where we brought the Group Managing Director of NNPC, Dr Maikanti Baru, and we made him to realise at the pre-conference workshop that we need to approach the issue of exploration in the frontier basin in a more structure and professional industry standard way.

I am happy to let you know that discussion has yielded or is yielding some positive result in the sense that prior to that time, a bit couple of years when exploration work technically stopped. In this effort we achieved 23 wells in the Chad basin and three wells in the Benue trough.

The effort of early 80s that cumulated in the drilling of those wells, was put to a stop in 1999 by the then administration of Obasanjo and what then happened was that we should evaluate all the data collected and know exactly all the data in going forward and that exercise was done. But the implementation of that exercise outcome was being done by this administration, so that is what is guiding them.

You may have read that in the Sokoto basin, Tambuwal who is the governor of Sokoto State and Baru met and basically were talking about the exploration in the Sokoto basin. The position of NAPE on that is as geologists, there is absolute nothing wrong with that, but if you know the science that goes into our profession, definitely it will speak to that, there is justification to go.

The most important thing to bear in mind is how do we then go forward and I think again, speaking from interactions we have been having with NNPC on the frontier exploration service, the GMD spoke well, that they are going to start with the field mapping, not just Sokoto basin but with Bida basin and they are giving the project to some academia in that area to basically do a ground field mapping. It is from there that the mapping grounds are generated, the geomorphology, the shape and the architecture work on the basin will begin to unravel and lead us to more data acquisition. So if you couple that with what is going on the Anambra basin, you will know there is still some past activities in the Anambra basin, way back spearheaded by companies that came into Nigeria at the inception of our independence.

 

We have wells dating back to the 1950s and 1960s etc, all drilled around these places and the number of them found some reservoirs that are still underdeveloped to this day and when you come down to Dahomey basin offshore Ogun basin and to Lagos, we know exploration and production is ongoing.

So in summary, we have moved and broadened our sources of hydrocarbon away from the Niger Delta and it’s not just Niger Delta that can supply, but of course Niger Delta is a matured province already in exploration and production. Since over 60 years now, the industry of course is still having issues, but all in all, we are talking about diversifying the economy and speaking directly to what the industry should be doing, and this is our focus.