Boko Haram Insurgency Disrupting Oil Exploration In North - NNPC- GMD

Source: thewillnigeria.com

SAN FRANCISCO, March 05, (THEWILL) - The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has announced that the frequent attacks by the Boko Haram insurgents are disrupting crude oil exploration in the North.

The Group Managing Director (GMD), Stanley Yakubu, specifically blamed the slow pace of work in the Chad Basin to the activities of insurgents in the Northern region, particularly in the North East.

Yakubu made this disclosure on Wednesday during the defence of the corporation's 2014 budget before the Senate Committee on Petroleum (Upstream).

He however, said that there are seven other basins apart from the Chad basin that the NNPC was exploring.

'What we did last year was to acquire the aero magnetic data from the geometric survey department.

We have Yola, Bida, Sokoto, Dahomey and others.
The main focus now, which was a result of an extensive geological study that was done a couple of years ago is on the Chad basin.

'The data for the other basins had been acquired and as soon as we progress with the Chad Basins.

It has 13 phases and we are now in phase six,' he said.

Yakubu also added that the projection of a daily crude production of 2.

44m in 2014 was realistic but also expressed fears on the security challenges occasioned by the pipeline breaches.

'We have the capacity to meet the daily quota but we need additional investment to address the security breaches that we continued to have,' he said.

He noted that the best way to distribute fuel was through the pipeline network to the various depots that are all over the country, saying there are over 20 of them and about 5, 000 kilometers stretch of pipelines.

He said the best and the most efficient way to distribute petroleum products was through pipeline network but that some of them had been breached, hence the current challenge.

'Making use of 1000 trucks per day to distribute fuel across the country is usually not the best but when we are faced with this situation, then the fall back will be the truck and that should be temporary and as soon as we fixed the pipelines, normalcy would be restored,' he said.

Consequently, Yakubu assured that the current fuel crisis in the country will end this week "We have a full team right now in Lagos, last week, the team was in Abuja.

We went round the clock to clean it up to get strategic reserve released to the stations and we are able to reduce the fuel queues.

"We shifted to Lagos at the weekend but we have injected quite a lot into the Lagos market.

All the marketers, the DPR, the PPRA, NNPC, and the PPMC have a very strong team out there to ensure that the deliveries are made.

Offshore, we have some vessels that had not been offloaded into the tank farms in Lagos and a lot of supplies have gone into most filling stations.

" "In the last couple of days, we have close to 1,000 trucks that had been loaded out of the various depots and jetties in Lagos and the entire fuel are being supplied to the various stations in Lagos and beyond.

As at the close of business on Tuesday, most filling stations in Victoria Island and Ikoyi were dispensing fuel and we expect that other parts of Lagos will be impacted by the increase in the fuel supply strategy that the combined team has been doing.

"Hopefully by the end of work today (Wednesday), we would begin to see a change in the fuel scarcity situation in Lagos," he added.

EMMA UCHE, ABUJA