NNPCL resumes oil drilling in northern Nigeria

The Governor of Gombe State, Inuwa Yahaya, said the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC Ltd) has resumed crude oil drilling at a field in the boundary of Bauchi and Gombe states.

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Mr Yahaya said this at the ongoing two-day Interactive Session on Government-Citizens Engagement at the Arewa House, Kaduna. The forum, organised by the Ahmadu Bello Memorial Foundation, was to assess President Bola Tinubu’s administration’s performance in the northern region in the first half of the administration’s term.

Mr Yahaya recalled how Mr Tinubu almost missed the flag-off ceremony of the oil drilling project at Kolmani in 2022 during the administration of former late President Muhammadu Buhari until he invited him to the event.

“President Bola Tinubu, who was then the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), was not invited to the ceremony by the NNPCL management or the federal government. I said no, we have a candidate who has to know something about this project, and I proposed to the then party leadership to invite him to the event under the APC forum,” Mr Yahaya recalled.

“I believe that President Buhari would go, and someone would come in and continue the project. I personally invited President Tinubu to the event, and he said that he would continue the project where the Buhari administration stopped. He fulfilled that promise because, as of today, the oil companies have resumed work at the field after so many lengthy negotiations with the National Security Adviser. By next week, Inshallah, the result will begin to show,” he said.

The NNPCL announced in October 2019 the discovery of hydrocarbon deposits in the Kolmani River II Well on the Upper Benue Trough, Gongola Basin, in the North-eastern part of the country.

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The Nigerian government began drilling at Kolmani in 2022, the first in the region after several crude oil explorations in the Upper Benue Trough.

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The discovery of oil and gas in commercial quantities in the Gongola Basin, according to the NNPCL, will attract foreign investment, generate employment for people to earn income and increase government revenues.

The government said over a billion barrels of oil and 500 billion cubic feet of gas were found within the Kolmani area of Gombe and Bauchi, and the discovery had already attracted a $3 billion investment.