President Jonathan ‘halts oil exploration’ in Niger
President Goodluck Jonathan and the Minister of Petroluem, Mrs Diezani Alison Madueke, have tactically halted the prospecting of oil in the Bida Basin of Niger state and the establishment of a refinery at Baro port with their refusal to grant oil bloc and operational licence to the state government, the Niger state Commissioner of Mines and Solid Minerals Development, Engeneer Jibrin Mohammed, has said.
The commissioner stated this yesterday when he addressed members of the House of Representatives Committee on Petroleum Downstream, led by its chairman, Honourable Dagogo Peterside, who paid a courtesy visit to Governor Mu’azu Babangida Aliyu at the Government House in Minna.
He explained that investigations by oil exploration experts have confirmed the presence of hydro carbon in the Bida Basin, adding that further investigations by experts in Port Harcourt on the hydro carbons indicated that there were 70 percent gas and 30 percent oil in the basin.
He regretted that the state could not however proceed to the next level in the exploration process because the presidency and the ministry were yet to respond to the application for approval as required by the law.
He said: “We set up a committee to find out what was happening after several months of not hearing from the ministry and we discovered that the letter was still on the minister’s table”.
In his remark, Governor Aliyu said he would not want to politicise the matter, adding that the important thing was that it has been established that oil was in commercial quantity in the Bida Basin.
He said the delay may have something to do with the non-passage of the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB), stressing the need for the National Assembly to expedite action on the passage of the bill.
He insisted that if Niger Republic and Chad had hit oil in large quantities, the prospects of getting oil in the North, and in Niger state in particular, was very high.
Aliyu took a swipe at the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), insisting that the corporation was not declaring the actual production figures of oil per day. He said there was the need to reorganise the corporation for efficiency. “Nobody knows how much oil is being produced in Nigeria”, he said.
However, the House Committee Chairman, Honourable Peterside, disagreed with the governor, explaining that it was unfair for anyone to say that the amount of oil being produced in the country was not known.
He explained that the problem was that most of the oil being produced was being stolen away, adding that the emphasis should be on how to curtail the activities of the oil thieves.
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