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By Adewale Sanyaolu
Nigeria has been listed as the lowest on the ladder among the top 10 Organisation of Petroleum Exporting countries (OPEC) with highest oil reserves in the world.
According to the latest industry data released by OPEC, Venezuela came tops with 303 billion barrels oil reserve followed by Saudi Arabia with 267 billion barrels, Iran 209 billion barrels, Iraq 145 billion barrels and UAE 113 billion barrels.
Others are: Kuwait 102 billion barrels, Russia 80 billion barrels, Libya 49 billion barrels, USA 45 billion barrels and Nigeria 37 billion barrels.
Nigeria’s reserves have remained relatively stagnant around 37 billion barrels for years, failing to grow significantly to replace daily extraction.
Nigeria’s oil reserves growth is stagnant and production is declining due to persistent issues like oil theft, pipeline vandalism, poor investment climate, insecurity, aging infrastructure, and a shift in focus from onshore to deepwater fields, hindering reserve replacement despite abundant potential.
Lack of new exploration, technical challenges, and policy uncertainty deter investment, causing reserves to remain relatively flat as oil is extracted.
Production on the other hand, has consistently fallen below the OPEC quota in some months due to operational constraints.
The government is also aiming to boost reserves and production by targeting 40 billion barrels and 3 million bpd but addressing the root causes of insecurity and investment decline is crucial.
Nigeria has significant oil potential, but operational and investment hurdles prevent it from effectively exploring, developing, and replacing its extracted reserves.
Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Mr. Heineken Lokopobiri, had alluded that Nigeria’s oil reserves are not growing because of the lack of exploration activities in the country over the years.
Lokpobiri disclosed this when Governor Usman Ododo of Kogi State paid a courtesy visit to the minister in his office.
“For the past few years, Nigeria hasn’t actually done much on exploration and that is why our reserves are not growing,” Lokpobiri said.
“Our reserves are about 37 billion barrels. Our reserves should be times two of that. The reason why we haven’t been able to update our records is because not much exploration was done in the last 12 years.”
He said harnessing the country’s oil and gas resources remains the easiest way to come out of economic woes it is currently experiencing.
He added that it has become necessary for Nigeria to increase its oil production as the world moves towards abandonment of fossil fuels.
According to him, the oil production in Nigeria, during the COVID era without new investment, was about 2.4 million barrels per day, noting that there was an urgent need to address concerns currently affecting crude oil production in the country.
“Those wells are still there. So once we address the security concerns, other concerns, the evacuation issues, we can easily go back to 2.4 million barrels per day,” he said.
He assured that the government would partner with Kogi State through the frontier exploration fund to carry out exploration activities.
“I want to say that the Ministry of Petroleum Resources will partner with the Kogi State Government so that we can use the Frontier Exploration Fund to do the exploration that is needed and I can assure you that we will not relent until we achieve that. The reason is that the easiest way we can come out of economic problems in the country is through the oil and gas sector and we have it in abundance in Nigeria, including in Kogi.
“What we need to do is to make the right investment so that we can extract this God-given deposit, God-given resources, to the market for sale. The thing about oil and gas is that you must bring it out from the ground to the market before it has value. And for you to bring it out from the ground, you need to make the right investments and the investments are already coming,” he said.
