Firms looking to East Africa for oil, gas

kessben November 15, 2014

0 1 minute read

Nigeria is no longer the preferred destination for oil exploration in Africa, the Managing Director\Chief Executive, Total Upstream Company in Nigeria, Elisabeth Proust, has said.
Proust attributed this to stiff competition from East Africa with large volumes of gas discovered in Mozambique, Tanzania, Kenya and Angola.
According to her, these countries have rolled out attractive terms and incentives designed to encourage exploration.
She stressed the need for aggressive exploration activities to replace reserves and develop exploitation projects.
She stated: “I believe all stakeholders recognise the urgent need to replace production in Nigeria. The level of drilling activity in Nigeria and the reserve replacement ratio of drilling activity in Nigeria and the reserves replacement ratio of the country are extremely low right now.
“For Nigeria’s oil and gas reserves to grow and for companies to invest in exploration and development of assets, there must be a clear, fair and stable and regulatory regime that allows long term planning and investing”.

She called for an urgent need to encourage aggressive exploration for oil and gas to replace reserves and develop exploitation projects.

“For example, there are considerable unexplored frontier basins in the deeply buried onshore, offshore and ultra-deep offshore Niger Delta of over 50 billion barrels of oil equivalent and about 10-15 billion barrels of oil equivalent in the Lagos abrupt margin and upper Benue trough.

In the current situation, there is need for the government authorities to be creative on incentives for exploration. Otherwise reserves replacement and production will continue to decline”, she added.

She disclosed that the company has just created a new energies entity in Nigeria to show its seriousness about its commitment to energy, particularly in Solar where, she said, the company has taken a 65 per cent interest in SunPower, the world’s second-largest solar energy company.

Credit: The Guardian

kessben November 15, 2014

0 1 minute read