Nasarawa State has 1.3bn barrels of hydrocarbon reserves, making it the highest crude oil reserves in the northern part of the country.
Nasarawa State governor, Abdullahi Sule stated this while delivering a speech at a dinner organised to celebrate the end of his first four years in office, at the Government House, Lafia, the state capital.
According to him, the state is not just an oil producing state in the North but has the highest hydrocarbons reserves so far.
“And the fear that we have had in the past where people were thinking there is no longer oil in the northern part of the country, that fear is out. Because the campaign that was started by former President Muhammadu Buhari at Lake Chad has already confirmed what they call standard oil in place of over 900m barrels in Lake Chad.
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“In Gombe, they confirmed at least one billion barrels. In Nasarawa State, they confirmed only in the Obi location that there is at least 1.3bn barrels of oil.
“These are confirmed numbers that no government can come and say, no forget about this, we are no longer going offshore,” he said.
The governor used the opportunity of the event to equally appreciate the Dangote Group for making a commitment to concentrate on agriculture, having been previously occupied with the construction of the Dangote Refinery in Lagos, the biggest single line refinery in the world with 650, 000 barrels per day.
In a goodwill message, a representative of the Dangote Group, Sani Dawop, General Manager, Dangote Industries Limited, said Nigeria needs 1.7m metric tons of sugar per annum and the country’s local production is only about 500, 000 metric tons, with a shortfall of about 1.2m metric tons.
He revealed that the Dangote Group investment in Nasarawa State is going to be the largest sugar investment in Africa in the next 10 years.
“It’s expected that in the next 10 years, we are going to produce 300, 000 metric tons and the sugarcane will be ground here in Nasarawa State and we will crush it and produce refined sugar in Nasarawa State,” Dawop said.