After Boko Haram Defeat Nigeria Set To Resume Oil Search In Chad Basin

After multi-billion dollars investments in several years of fruitless search for crude oil in the Northern part of the country, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) is set to resume oil exploration in the Chad Basin.

The Group Managing Director of the Corporation, Joseph Dawha, said with the significant improvement in the security situation in the eastern part of the country, the region was ideal for the resumption of oil search in the Chad Basin.

North East Nigeria has been the hotbed of a brutal insurgency by jihadist group, Boko Haram, since 2009.

The Nigerian military has made significant progress in the last few months in flushing the militants from territories they once held.

The NNPC boss, Mr. Dawha, was speaking in Abuja at the 21st Annual General Meeting of Integrated Data Services Nigeria Limited, IDSL, the subsidiary of the NNPC responsible for seismic data acquisition in the Chad area.

The GMD of NNPC said preliminary information from previous exploration programmes in the area revealed significant data that have encouraged the move to go back there.

He said previous oil exploration activities in the Chad Basin were suspended following the poor security situation in the northeast a few years ago.

Describing the situation as unfortunate, Mr. Dawha commended the security forces for their successes in recent times in the fight against the insurgents.

On the performance of IDSL, he said in spite of the challenge of funding as a result of the fall in crude oil prices, the NNPC subsidiary’s performance in recent times was encouraging.

Specifically, he commended the company for recording a 32 percent revenue growth during the year.

The Managing Director of the company, Victor Briggs, said IDSL was expanding its operations beyond the shores of Nigeria to neighbouring West African countries and other emerging oil producing countries in Africa.

IDSL was incorporated in 1988 to provide technical services to the country’s oil industry, including the provision of seismic data acquisition, processing and interpretation as well as petroleum and reservoir engineering data evaluation, computer and other ancillary services.