Insurgency delaying oil exploration in Chad basin —NNPC

Speaking during the 2014 budget defence of the corporation before the Joint National Assembly Committee on Petroleum Resources upstream yesterday, Yakubu said but for the insurgency in the region the NNPC would have gone far with its exploration activities.
He said: “In line with government’s aspiration of opening up all known sedimentary basins for exploration, a seismic acquisition contract was awarded in 2010 in respect of the Chad basin and several studies as well as community projects are also ongoing in the basin.”
Yakubu who gave a tabulated breakdown of the exploration activities and stages to the lawmakers indicating zero percent performance in 10 out of 20 projects related to the exploration activities said, “the low performance was as a result of the insurgencies in the region however, work in progressing.”
The NNPC boss disclosed that there are seven other basins apart from the Chad where exploration work is ongoing and that the corporation had last year acquired the magnetic data from the geometric survey department.
He listed the seven basins to include Yola, Bida, Sokoto,  Dahomey and others.
Mr. Yakubu said this year, the NNPC is proposing a budget estimate of $11.505 billion (N180 billion) out of which $5.5 billion (N88 billion) will be spent on operations.  
On the fuel scarcity in the country, the NNPC GMD said: “In the last couple of days, we have close to 1000 trucks that had been loaded out of the various depots and jetties in Lagos and the entire fuel are being supplied to the various stations in Lagos and beyond”.