In the northern section of Nigeria the search for oil has just received a boost; the New Nigeria Development Company [NNDC] has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with a foreign firm, Energem Petroleum Corporation, to start exploration in the Lake Chad Basin and Benue Trough.

NNDC, which is owned by the governments of 19 Northern states, successfully secured two of the 13 oil blocks which the Federal Government earmarked for the Chad Basin. The blocks are OPL 722 and OPL 723 at the price of $510,000 each.
Speaking at a ceremony for the signing of the MOU in Kaduna on Monday, NNDC managing director, Alhaji Aliyu Alkali, explained that the discovery of oil in Niger and Chad had given NNDC the incentive to bid for the blocks, as they share the same geographical formations with the Chad Basin. He did however add that “the venture into oil and gas will not make us lose sight of the need for wealth creation in the region, through the development of agriculture and solid minerals which are also being pursued.”

According to Alkali, the venture will be used to produce power and fertilizer that will enhance industrial and agricultural production. “It is with this scenario at the back of our mind that the NNDC management, as part of its strategic business focus and desire to improve the economic well-being of the region, decided to fully participate in the 2005 bid rounds for some oil blocs in the Chad Basin and the Benue Trough,” he said.

Alkali said he was confident that the company would achieve the desired results more so, as, according to him, Energem Petroleum Corporation is a “competent and resourceful petroleum company that has extensive upstream and downstream activities in many countries of the world, including West Africa.”

Energem chief executive officer, Andy Macaulay, said his company’s operations were spread across 18 countries and that they would do everything within their technical competence to strike oil in the Chad Basin and Benue Trough.
The search for oil in the area began in the 1960s by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), in 2001 NNPC suspended further exploration of its 23 exploration wells in the zone, arguing that there was not commercial sized discoveries there.