Nigeria: Oil reserve hits 32 billion barrels

This was disclosed at the weekend by the National Petroleum Investment Management Services (NAPIMS), an arm of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) which, among others, monitors all joint venture crude oil activities.
The body also disclosed that the Federal Government has reduced the cash call debt it inherited from about N65 billion ($500 million) to about N13 billion ($450 million).
According to the monitoring agency, the NNPC has also paid the N26 billion local portion of the debt overhang to its joint venture partners.
NAPIMS' Group General Manager, Mr. Chris Osa Ogiemwonyi, who addressed the press in Lagos, said the current national leadership had boosted foreign investors' confidence in the sector by paying the debt.
The development, he added, has encouraged stakeholders to help achieve the nation's set goals in the oil and gas industry.
He also announced plans by Nigeria to participate in the "Offshore Technology Conference" (OTC) holding in Houston, Texas early next month.
"The President directed that we pay all the cash call arrears before the end of his tenure, when he assumed office in 1999, so I can assure you that right now, we shall pay the balance to the affected companies before the end of the first term in May this year", Ogiemwonyi said.
He added: "As of today we are not owing Shell any kobo as far as the pre-1999 cash call arrears are concerned".
According to him, NNPC is also not owing any of its joint venture partners for any month since 2000.
"We pay the cash call every first day of the month, and let me say that since we came into office we did not owe any of our joint venture partners any money either foreign or local", he added.
The NAPIMS boss stated that apart from keeping faith with payment of cash calls, to the joint venture partners, a number of strategies have been adopted to increase local input into the upstream sector of the oil and gas industry.
Specifically, Ogiemwonyi stated that as part of effort towards ensuring strict compliance with the NNPC local content policy, all oil prospecting companies with effect from this year will apply strict rules to assist local contractors. These include:
All seismic jobs in the range of 0-800 square kilometres to be done by local companies;
All Front Engineering and Design (FED) jobs for some key projects will be handled by local firms;
Oil prospecting firms, must carry out all fabrication jobs except for highly technical projects with particular reference to deep offshore projects; and
All geological and geophysical studies will be carried out in the country as well as the review of major projects being handled by the operating companies.
He stated that, a World Bank strategy in contract award system was being adopted by the NNPC to bring transparency, competitiveness and accountability into the award of all contracts in the exploration and production activities.
The NAPIMS boss added that the issue of local content has become a critical factor in the determination of contract award system in the industry.
Ogiemwonyi stated that the participation in the OTC is to bring investment to the country and boost technology transfer. He stressed that Nigeria had the resources but needed funds and technical expertise through effective cross fertilisation of ideas.
The NAPIMS boss said NNPC's projection is to achieve 40 per cent local contract in upstream sector by 2005 and 60 per cent by 2010; adding that in the last three years about 10 per cent has been achieved above the five per cent of 1999.
NAPIMS is also charged with monitoring, as well as the Production Sharing Contract (PSC) and Service Contract on behalf of the NNPC.
NNPC's joint venture companies are: Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Limited (SPDC); Mobil Producing Nigeria Unlimited; Chevron Nigeria Limited; Nigerian Agip Oil Company (NAOC); Elf Petroleum Nigeria Limited and Tobacco Overseas Petroleum Company Nigeria Unlimited.