Three years after the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Ltd discovered crude oil in commercial quantity in Northern Nigeria, President Muhammadu Buhari will tomorrow officially flag off the ground-breaking ceremony of the Kolmani OPLs 809 and 810 at the Kolmani field site in Bauchi and Gombe states.

The NNPC Ltd had in October 2019 announced the discovery of crude oil, gas and condensate in the Kolmani River region at the border community between Bauchi and Gombe states.

This oil field is to be developed by Sterling Global Oil, New Nigeria Development Company and NNPC Limited.

The ceremony will be attended by the president who also doubles as the minister of Petroleum Resources. Buhari will be joined in the flag-off by his cabinet members, including the minister of state for Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylva.

Other dignitaries expected at the event are the chairman of the NNPC Board, Mrs Margary Okadigbo; the NNPC group chief executive officer, Mallam Mele Kyari; the executive vice president, Upstream, NNPC Limited, Mr Adokiye Tombomieye; and chief investment officer of the NNPC Upstream Investment Management Services Ltd, Mr Bala Wunti, among others.

The flag-off of the crude oil drilling is a major boost to the efforts by the federal government to ensure that the region produces crude oil in commercial quantity.

OPLs 809 and 810 lie in the Gongola Basin of the Upper Benue trough in the straddle area between Bauchi and Gombe states. It is part of the Upper Benue Trough is a North-South trending arm of the 1000km long Benue Trough.

It was learnt that as part of the current administration’s drive to explore hydrocarbon from the frontier areas, in 2019, the NNPC through its subsidiary, the Frontier Exploration Services (FES) obtained approval of the president and the contractor, the New Nigeria Development Company (NNDC) drilled Kolmani River-2 exploration well.

Findings revealed that this was followed by another exploration Well, Kolmani-River 3, and Kolmani River-4 as an appraisal to Kolmani River 3.

The explorations led to the successful discovery of two fields in the area with discovered 2P reserve of over one billion barrels of oil and 500bcf of gas in place.

Consequently, in 2021, NNPC through its subsidiary NNPC Exploration and Production Company Limited (NEPL), formally known as Nigerian Petroleum Development Company Limited (NPDC) farmed-in 51 per cent into OPLs 809 and 810.