Senate okays new PIB for consideration

The Federal Government and the Nigerian Association of Petroleum Explorationists (NAPE) are in discussion to woo investors into exploring for oil and gas in the frontier basins in Nigeria.

NAPE President, Nosa Omorodion, said this in Lagos when the association outlined activities for its 34th yearly international conference and exhibition scheduled for November 13 to 17 in Lagos.

The theme of the conference is "Stimulating upstream investments in Nigeria's frontier basins."

Omorodion said it was imperative to look for oil and gas in other sedimentary basins outside the Niger Delta region to grow the nation's reserves, which is fast being depleted. He said the association's desire was to open up exploration, adding that it is economic realities that are preventing people from exploration, not fiscal terms as most people think.

According to him, some years ago, when exploration was low, the government came up with some incentives, and signed memoranda of understanding (MoUs), geared towards boosting oil and gas finds.

''It was at that time when we (Nigeria) attained astronomical growth in terms of reserves because people were incentivised to go and drill exploration wells.''

"The easy way out in a time like this is to open up our taps and produce but it is a big concern to us as explorationists because the replenishment rate doesn't match our depletion rate which is a big concern. If we continue like this in the next 35 years we will completely run out of oil. The big chance discoveries especially the deep water, takes between eight and 10 years to bring them on stream. If you are depleting and not replacing, it is a big concern. If you make a discovery today, it will take an average of five or six years to produce it, so it is a huge gap," he said, urging the government to give incentives that would attract investors into drilling new wells.

On the need for the government to conduct a new licensing round, the NAPE chief said a new licensing round would be one of the topics to be discussed but that would be a subtle advocacy as a new licensing round is one way to stimulate the industry. However, he argued that even the oil wells we have as a country are not optimally explored. He said people are not drilling the wells they have because of low oil price.

The President-elect and Chairman Conference Planning Committee, Abiodun Adesanya, noted that several issues confront the upstream section of the industry.

He said: "We have issues such as Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) that has remained a lingering problem, shortfall in Joint Venture (JV) funding that has affected production, issues of job losses.

''Our members have lost jobs here and there, issues of vandalisation and security, which is currently waning following governments discussions with militants in the region. All these have affected us. There are times we were prevented from working, we have passion to do our jobs but with scenarios where workers are kidnapped, people are scared. As professionals we need to work, we don't want job losses."

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