The Federal Government has rallied upstream operators on the need to increase investment and embrace the use of artificial intelligence, virtual and machine learning in exploration and production.
This is in the hope that the investments will help ramp up oil production as the country continues to record declines in oil production volume attributed to technical challenges and theft.
Nigeria’s production in the last few months has been below budgetary benchmark, dropping to 1.37 million barrels a day in October, 261,000 bpd below its OPEC+ quota.
The latest monthly report of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) also showed that Nigeria’s rig count slumped to nine from 11.
The Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC), said the industry is plagued by investor skepticism, high-level competition, climate change and clamor for a clean environment, thus necessitating a paradigm shift in the exploration and production value chain to stay afloat.
The Chief Executive Officer, NUPRC, Gbenga Komolafe, at the ongoing Nigerian Association of Petroleum Explorationists (NAPE) 2021 conference in Lagos, pointed out that oil production in Nigeria had declined to an average of 1.6 million barrels per day in 2021.
He said the decline in production could be attributed to theft, insecurity, aging facilities, decline in exploration and production enhancement initiatives.
“As the upstream technical and commercial regulator, we are committed to addressing these issues to increase our reserves to 40 billion barrels and raise our production to three million barrels per day by initiating Public Private Partnerships (PPP) involving the security agencies, private operators and other stakeholders to address the challenging issues of crude oil theft, sabotage and pipeline vandalism.
“Collaborative efforts between operators, communities and the deployment of state-of-the-art technology to monitor pipelines in remote areas is on course,” Komolafe said.
He said a more aggressive policy on routine Asset Integrity Management to curb crude leakages and spills caused by aging facilities would be adopted.
He further said the agency was making provisions to incentivise drilling targets at deeper horizons and to also provide guidelines to ensure seismic acquisition design to image deep plays.
President of NAPE, Patricia Ochogbu, said oil and gas would remain relevant in the energy mix both now and in the foreseeable future as the world gears towards energy transition.
She said Africa, particularly Nigeria, needs more of safe and clean energy due to its attendant benefits and that explorationists must focus on deploying new technologies that would reduce carbon emissions in exploration activities and optimise the nation’s oil and gas resources.
