“Nigeria’s target of 40 billion barrel of oil reserves was not based on shale oil”

BERNARD OBOAREKPE, chairman, Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) Nigeria Council, in this interview with FRANK UZUEGBUNAM and FEMI ASU, at the ongoing NAICE conference/exhibition says Nigeria’s target of 40 billion barrels of oil reserves was not based on shale oil. 

The goal now is to grow our oil reserves to 40 billion barrels from 35 billion. Do we see shale oil as one of the ways we can grow our reserves? 

The target of 40 billion barrels oil reserves was not based on shale oil, it was based on the conventional resources that we have. But you know that we have unconventional resources in Nigeria as well. Many of you have heard of tar sands, which is the obvious one many people will know about. Tar sands are in some parts of the western parts of this country. That has not been factored into the reserves that we are talking about. When you factor in the unconventional resources that we could have in this country, certainly our reserves will be much more than that. Even the conventional reserves, I cannot say that 40 billion barrels is the bar. For a target, that is what was set by government. But there are still a lot of exploration activities going on in a couple of places. We are also exploring deeper, into deeper horizons. We also have quite a number of gas in Nigeria and perhaps we even have more gas than oil in the country. So we should be really thinking about how we are going to convert gas and make it more useful for us as Nigerians.

Should Nigeria panic over divestment of assets by the IOCs?

No. Divestment is a normal course of business anywhere in the world. It just happens that it is now that it is happening to us in Nigeria. People acquire assets and they give up assets. So it is normal. If a player says this asset is no longer ranking top in his portfolio, then it is ready to give it up. So that is the way it works. If I have five fields, I may say I have money to develop only two, so I am going to take the top two. The other three I am probably ready to give them up. So we should not be scared about it. I know change is always a problem for most people but if you actually look at it closely and you analyse it properly, you will know that there is no cause for alarm. All we have to do is to ensure that we regulate the industry properly such that we do not erode the value of these assets that are being given out.