Nigeria’s oil reserves to dry up in 43 years – Agip boss
By Our correspondent
Published: Saturday, 21 Jun 2008

The General Manager, Nigerian Agip Oil Exploration, Mr. Richard Ogunde, on Friday in Ijebu Ode, Ogun State said Nigeria’s oil reserve had only 43 years to dry up.

The News Agency of Nigeria reports that Ogunde made the disclosure in a lecture at the Tai Solarin University of Education, Ijagun, Ijebu-Ode, Ogun State. Quoting from the latest World oil data, Ogunde said Nigeria’s reserve remained 36.2 billion barrels.

He said in the lecture, titled “Petroleum Exploration, The Economy and Science Education,” that Nigeria had a yearly oil production capacity of 2.3bn barrels.

The oil expert advised government to start looking for other oil reserves. He urged the Federal Government to seek other means of sustenance after oil might have disappeared, “especially now that we have abandoned agriculture.”

The geophysicist accused successive governments of conniving with the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation to misdirect, mismanage and mis-apply the country’s oil revenue without commensurate infrastructure growth. He criticised the NNPC for engaging in the direct sale of petroleum products by setting up retail outlets in different parts of the country.

Ogunde, who said that Nigeria had remained “poor despite our being rich in oil dollars simply because some people are just habitual bad managers of the nation’s resources,” regretted that the country still suffered from poor energy supply after the exploration of oil for over five decades.

He said, “Unfortunately, if there is no electricity, you cannot develop infrastructure. When a nation fails to develop her infrastructure, there is no way her economy can grow.” He also described the graduates of oil-related courses from the Nigerian universities as “half-baked and unemployable.”

NAN quotes him as saying that many of the job-seeking graduates of Geology and Geophysics with high-class degrees did not even understand simple practical terms in oil exploration and processing. He said, “The situation was so bad that when I interviewed well over 200 of these so-called brilliant geologists and geophysicists, I found less than 10 of them worthy of consideration.”

Ogunde expressed regrets that his findings had also revealed that more than 99 per cent of the graduates were not ready to meet the difficult challenges existing in the oil industry, warning that “the sector does not have room for layabouts who professed to be super-graduates.”


source:http://www.punchng.com/Articl.aspx?theartic=Art200806210142062

mmmhhh 43yrs 5yrs would have been better.

forget 43 yrs green living is the future in 5 yrs these oil producing nations should have up n running alternatives

well all i know in god we trust!!! the world is doomed for none believers!!! all those fake nigeria repent now before time catch up with you!!! never too late hahh oh well!!

who can we trust here!!

1; there are experts out there that simply dnt beleive in global warning if na lie ask the americans
2; there also people who strongly beleive the crude oil will never runs out!!

hmmmm

43 Years to the end of Kidnapping and Militancy in Nigeria

let me tell u God has a way of always showing us whoz boss weneva we get too comfy and think we too smart . overpopulation is a major problem in Asia hence all these disasters.SA 2 much sex hence Aids.etc and then the whole world increaringly messing up the enviro everyday has got have some negative consequence , its called global warming

43 years?? That a load of horse manure.

Is that for the onshore or is that for offshore reserves?? Is that our proven or unproven reserves?? who carrie out the estimation?? Nigeria is currently exploiting the agbada formation, we have not even explored the akata because technology avaliable now would not permit exploration at such depths??
Abeg make una free matter jare!! In as much as the government needs to find alternative sources of national income, 45 years is a gross underestimation of our reserves.

Ask for those green wateva ppl, sorry to bust your bubble, the world can never run away from hydrocarbons at least not even in the next 10years.

43 years to the end of Nigeria

whats OIL reserve when we have GAS reserve second to only Russia

@landis
I beg educate 'em jare. I am quite sure the 43yrs is based on known reserves. What abt the unknown's (deepwater exploration, -1Km depth that can only be drilled by ROV's)
Our gas reserves is second to none so sorry to bust u peeps bubbles)
Yes every nation needs to invest, promote and use alternative energy dats why we have all dis peeps going on abt biofuels.
A very close friend of mine works for a renewable energy company that have just discovered a bug that help multplies the quantity of bioethanol produced from maze.
Things (ingeneous innovations) are happening so sit back and relax

@landis,
Excellent chip in there. Seems to me that the ''glorified'' Agip geophysicist has never heard anything about barrels of oil equivalent - boe. When we are still flaring gas in the delta, and we're doing all we can to tap the huge trillions of standard cubic feet of gas in place (GIIP) some one is looking at oil and telling the whole world how ''smart'' he is.

This is not to justify the shit going on in the industry though. The chap is right about the way our ''leaders'' mismanage the resources (proceeds) from oil sales in the country. And I still believe that this nation need to split up along geopolitical lines for us to get our bearing.

ono:

@landis,
Excellent chip in there. Seems to me that the ''glorified'' Agip geophysicist has never heard anything about barrels of oil equivalent - boe. When we are still flaring gas in the delta, and we're doing all we can to tap the huge trillions of standard cubic feet of gas in place (GIIP) some one is looking at oil and telling the whole world how ''smart'' he is.

This is not to justify the shit going on in the industry though. The chap is right about the way our ''leaders'' mismanage the resources (proceeds) from oil sales in the country. And I still believe that this nation need to split up along geopolitical lines for us to get our bearing.

I Don't see anythign wrong in what this guy has said.
The world is consuming Oil at an alarming rate. It's widely believed that most giant reservoirs on land have already been found, with deepwater and offshore oil remaining as the new frontier.

You know as well as i do that he knows what 'boe' is. In that 43 years most of our Gas would have been produced anyway. There are plans underway to expand our LNG and our domestic usage of gas. Isn't it from these gas reserves we'll use to supply LNG, power plants and industries?

jay bee:

I beg educate 'em jare. I am quite sure the 43yrs is based on known reserves. What about the unknown's (deepwater exploration, -1Km depth that can only be drilled by ROV's)

Why would someone make a projection on unknown reserves. Of course he's talking about known reserves. You cannot make projections for what you haven't seen yet. If not we might as well start adding the mythical hydrocarbons to be found in Northern Nigeria.

So what significant development and progress has all these oil and gas reserves brought us so far?


golden mile Dubai 1991


golden mile Dubai 2006

And the above pic is just showing one road/place. I better not embarrass Nigeria by doing a "then and now" sequence for it too,  the case is actually the reverse  . So what trumpet are we exactly blowing? It is not necessarily what you have, it is what you do with what you have. LOL, Nigeria

Tex,
Well, for me to believe that he truly knows what he's talking about, I would have loved to see those figures quoted in boe instead of barrels of oil only. If the 36.2 billion barrels of oil is inclusive of gas, then what portion of that volume constitute gas? And in these days of categorising what volumes one is talking about (proved, expectation, scope for recovery, etc) we need to know what category the 36.2 billion barrels falls. Now lets say the volume quoted is proved voluimes. What about expectation volumes which have not met the criteria for it to be classed as proved? What about Scope for recovery volumes?

Anyways, I did not say his statements were completely wrong; at least the bit about mismanagement on the part of our ''leaders'' is spot on.

The other day, I saw a map with the Niger Delta basin explicitly defined. In the next couple of years, the ''virgin'' deep offshore part of the delta will turn another GOM. Already, the Bonga field,  Agbami and other huge finds offshore of the delta attests to the fact that there is still much to be exploited out there that we really do not have much information about.

goodnews

this might be a blessing in disguise afterall all the problems of this country as we know it are tied to oil

that will not make Nigeria poor, we have many untapped natural resources.

that will not make Nigeria poor, we have many untapped natural resources

.

why are this treasury looters masqurading as government not tapping them. when the oil finish , the party is over, everybody must go home.

Sky Blue:

So what significant development and progress has all these oil and gas reserves brought us so far?


And the above pic is just showing one road/place. I better not embarrass Nigeria by doing a "then and now" sequence for it too, the case is actually the reverse . So what trumpet are we exactly blowing? It is not necessarily what you have, it is what you do with what you have. LOL, Nigeria

They are jealous of us, They envy us!!!

Kobojunkie:


They are jealous of us, They envy us!!!

Of course they are jealous of us, all those smooth roads must make driving in Dubai very boring and monotonous one could easily fall asleep due to comfort and boredom. In Nigeria our roads provide more of a challenge and hence more exciting to drive on, dodging those pot holes is like playing video game. So you get entertainment and trasnport to you destination all in one. You are even given a forced rest a la go slow to recuperate and sometimes if you are lucky the contents of your car get unloaded for free coutesy of our "men of the highway". Now entertainment and transport or just boring old transport, which one would you choose? Do you know how much government invests in Nigerian roads? Those pot holes are not due to neglect oh, just go and check out how many billions were assigned to roads during last tenure. Jealousy

Sky Blue:

Of course they are jealous of us, [b]all those smooth roads must make driving in Dubai very boring and monotonous one could easily fall asleep due to comfort and boredom. In Nigeria our roads provide more of a challenge and hence more exciting to drive on, dodging those pot holes is like playing video game. So you get entertainment and trasnport to you destination all in one. You are even given a forced rest a la go slow to recuperate and sometimes if you are lucky the contents of your car get unloaded for free coutesy of our "men of the highway". Now entertainment and transport or just boring old transport, which one would you choose? [/b]Do you know how much government invests in Nigerian roads? Those pot holes are not due to neglect oh, just go and check out how many billions were assigned to roads during last tenure. Jealousy

What a shitloads of kraut.
So you mean our bad roads are better than that of DUBAI and the Rest that are SMOOTH??
What about the Soldiers who went to Sudan and then came back successfully to Nigeria only to die in accident on their way home ?
The awkward and absurd way some people reason sometimes would make one Wanna squash their head with a sledge hammer.

@Sly sorry the sarcasm was lost on you i am guessing you read my post with one eye closed?  Besides my post was a response to Kobojukie's so you did not have to respond

Sky Blue:

Of course they are jealous of us, all those smooth roads must make driving in Dubai very boring and monotonous one could easily fall asleep due to comfort and boredom. In Nigeria our roads provide more of a challenge and hence more exciting to drive on, dodging those pot holes is like playing video game. So you get entertainment and trasnport to you destination all in one. You are even given a forced rest a la go slow to recuperate and sometimes if you are lucky the contents of your car get unloaded for free coutesy of our "men of the highway". Now entertainment and transport or just boring old transport, which one would you choose? Do you know how much government invests in Nigerian roads? Those pot holes are not due to neglect oh, just go and check out how many billions were assigned to roads during last tenure. Jealousy

What are you saying?? That Nigeria has corrupt leaders?? Dubai and Italy have corrupt leaders as well, you don't hear complaining of having to put up with the ineptitude of their government. Why are you a Nigerian complaing?? Accept that bad roads are all we have and that it is your duty as a citizen to learn to adapt and manage what we have for as long as we have it. And if the government decides to build knew roads, you should come out to kill a cow in worship of your lords and masters in leadership!!! if not, you are not a patriotic nigeria and I am about ashamed of your kind.

there is a plan between the north and west to suck dry the Niger delta s people oil, leaving them with nothing but a devastated environment.

It is not 43 years for obvious reasons.

1) Nigeria has not developed most of its Oil blocks
2) Production is at it its lowest in decades
3) Exploration in the Gulf of Guinea is not as efficient as it could be with Stability

Our government those not know the exact figure of oil production in Nigeria, because must of the oil are lost through bunkering.

The Sly:

What a shitloads of kraut.
So you mean our bad roads are better than that of DUBAI and the Rest that are SMOOTH??
What about the Soldiers who went to Sudan and then came back successfully to Nigeria only to die in accident on their way home ?
The awkward and absurd way some people reason sometimes would make one Wanna squash their head with a sledge hammer.

Sarcasm dear Sarcasm

The Sly

i like your styte, nice one u updating folks about how vin can be used .

keep up the good work

E Pluribus Unum

dblock:

It is not 43 years for obvious reasons.

1) Nigeria has not developed most of its Oil blocks
2) Production is at it its lowest in decades
3) Exploration in the Gulf of Guinea is not as efficient as it could be with Stability

undiscovered oil may not be there at all. There's so much uncertainty when you're dealing with the subsurface. After all, you know how many dry wells we've drilled in the North?

Sometimes you nairalanders amuse me. This statement came from Agip chief geophysicist who has many many years of experience. Yet we see laymen on Nairaland challenging his estimates.
We lack humility and modesty in Nigeria, if not the folly in challenging a learned professional's figures with laymans opinions should have registered in your brains.

@ TP

I wonder why these lay challenges are coming - someone who works day in day out and produces these same 'figures' that the lay analysis is based on cannot be trusted? Is it not the same Nigeria where someone said the North can stop the oil flowing to the South any time they want and are being 'magnanimous' to keep it flowing?

The only reasonable critique that can be made of these figures is that oil and gas production lifespans are constantly being reviewed, as some probable reserves become proven reserves, and as technology improves and production methods advance. But many recent predictions even include such additional discoveries and the like into their time estimates.

The truth is, based on current data, his estimate is accurate and should be a wake up call to the relevant authorities. Whether or not it really matters in the day to day existence in Nigeria is another matter altogether; after all, what tangible benefits has the oil given except for a few flyovers in Lagos and Abuja city?

@ Sky Blue

we could do a before and after on Abuja and get the same imagery and contrast, so I don't really see what that image achieves. One question though, did the oil money change the sky from dusty brown to clear blue as well? ^{chei oyel money good o!}

@debosky do you really think a before and after of Abuja will come anywhere near the scale shown above? Yes abuja is nice but let us not turn this into a joke thread  . With regards to the blue sky, when Nigeria gets to that level then they can use the babalawo that people in dubai used. These guys are not ordinary babalawo, you have to book in advance to get the "blue sky" job and it is no chicken change at all, even London city council could not afford the full package so they had to book for the "three months in a year" premium, lots of cities in the states have been getting it at discount   .

43 more years of curse.