Chad Basin oil exploration critical to economic growth – NNPC

The Group Managing Director, Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, Mr. Austen Oniwon, has said that further discovery of oil in commercial quantity in the arid region of the Chad Basin in Kukawa Local Government Area of Borno State will bolster the nation’s economy. A statement on Sunday quoted him as saying this in Kukawa when he paid a visit to the site to monitor the progress of work at the NNPC Chad Basin operation.

He maintained that the NNPC Chad Basin oil exploration was a very critical assignment for the corporation. He added that President Goodluck Jonathan had given NNPC the mandate to evaluate the prospects of commercial quantity of hydrocarbon in the area. He said, “The assignment we are doing here is very critical to our country as the whole nation is looking up to us to prove, once and for all, that there is commercial hydrocarbon in Nigeria’s Chad Basin. “The outcome of our work here will prove to the rest of the world indeed that there are great prospects of hydrocarbon, which will attract investors to invest in the petroleum industry of our country.” Meanwhile, the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria has demanded that the Federal Government should give priority to the indigenous investors in the allocation of marginal field acreages in the oil and gas industry. The association said that the government should begin to widen its attention and domination beyond the upstream oil and gas activities. PENGASSAN pointed out that the upstream oil and gas activities, as currently positioned in Nigeria , did not help to maximise the inherent benefits in the nation’s hydrocarbon endowments.

Punch Newspapers

the delusion continues. get any competent nigerian geologist well versed in geological basin analysis to explain to you why a place with such a recent volcanic origin (like the Chad basin) will not have oil. sediments baked at thousands of degrees destroy any organic matter talkless producing oil.


be fooled at your own peril.

Chad basin in Chad,Sudan and Niger all have oil but the Nigerian side has no oil for unknown reasons.Let them continue wasting our money on futile venture that even if successful will bring further crisis to an area already infected by religious fanatics.

Jonathan is just being political, Oil I don't think so, why? Since the '80s NNPC has being investing capital on oil and gas exploration in the chad Basin till now nothing, secondly, it's wrong that the Chad Basin is producing oil for Chad or Niger, The bulk of Chads deposits is found in Doba Basin in the most southern most province of Chad. Niger is producing substantial oil from the Termit-Agadem Basin, not Chad Basin, and the Chinese hustled for it.

but natural gas can never be rules out, Natural gas can occur in the most unlikely locations,

Again there is certainly something valuable in the Chad Basin, Africulture, food, fish, the governments in the region should concentrate on real assets that would improve the economy of the people living around the Chad basin not some exploitative, wastefull and potentially environmentally destructive venture in the Chad Basin,