Petroleum Africa
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Monday, April 26, 2004
Despite the latest downgrade of oil and gas reserves held by Shell in Nigeria and worldwide, the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) announced that it reserves are still sitting at 34 billion barrels. Nigeria has arrived at this total by including condensates. The country, according to the DPR, has 29 billion barrels of oil and five billion barrels of condensate as well as 187 Tcf of natural gas.
Shell, Nigeria’s biggest oil producer shocked the global oil industry last January when it announced that it had cut its oil reserves claims by 20% or 3.9 billion barrels. It further reduced the claims by 250 million barrels, citing Nigeria as one of its operating areas affected most by the downgrade. The announcement shook up the Nigerian government which was in the process of campaigning for a quota increase from OPEC. The timing of reserves cut could not have come at a worse time in Nigeria’s OPEC campaign, as the cartel had sent a team to collate data on the country’s reserve claims. The DPR is holding talks with Shell on the discrepancies in the oil reserve figures.
In other efforts to increase its reserves, the government is in negotiations with Norway to cooperate in the Nigerian oil sector. Last week the Norwegian Petroleum and Energy Minister Einer Steenesaes led a delegation to the country. Macaulay Ofurhie, head of the DPR, wants to take advantage of Norway’s experience in the development of offshore deepwater operations. According to the DPR boss, apart from tapping from the Norwegians relatively longer experience in the offshore terrain, the collaboration could also tap from the impressive experience of Norway on gas development, as Nigeria strives to attain the objectives of gas flare-out by 2008. He described the on-going offshore floating LNG project being sponsored by Norway’s Statoil and other partners at the Nnwa Doro field as a good example of practical cooperation.
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