This is in a bid to step up measures to ensure a successful operation in the ongoing search for crude oil in the Chad Basin and other parts of the Inland Sedimentary Basin even as President Muhammadu Buhari has ordered for deeper inquest into the prospectivity of some hitherto neglected finds in some areas in the North Eastern part of Nigeria.

Group Managing Director of the NNPC, Mr. Maikanti Baru, who disclosed this, yesterday, when governor of Bauchi State, Mr. Mohammed Abubakar, paid him a courtesy visit in Abuja, also lamented that Nigeria was currently facing difficult times.

Baru said the NNPC currently had exploration activities going on in the frontier basin in Chad and also in some areas close to the Kolmani River, located in Bauchi State, where Shell had made some indicative discovery of hydrocarbons. According to him, the President has directed the NNPC to go into that area to improve and further explore the magnitude and prospect of those finds.

In response to the directive of the President, Baru disclosed that the NNPC was currently taking steps to re-strategise and get into those regions to step up crude oil exploration activities. “We will re-invigorate the Frontier Exploration Services and see how they collaborate with the Northern Nigeria Development Company, NNDC.

‘’NNDC is holding bloc 809 where we have some of the finds and also the Department for Petroleum Resources, DPR, for the other blocs that have not been assigned,” Baru added. On the tough economic situation, Baru lamented that the various attacks on oil and gas assets across the country was making it difficult for the corporation to meet its financial obligations to the country.

He said: “It is a very difficult time for us with all the leakages that we suffer, especially infractions on our infrastructure, in terms of pipeline vandalism and theft to be able to meet our obligations to the Federation Account Allocation Committee, FAAC.

***Read Blank NEWS Online for regular news updates…Also like us on Facebook & follow us on Twitter @blanknewsonlin1

Advertise in Blank NEWS Online. 
Visit Us @:
www.blanknewsonline.wordpress.com 
Email: blanknewsonline@ymail.com 
Phone: +234 8037 644 337 
Nigeria (Blank NEWS Online) – 
E.I.C: Albert Eruorhe Ograka