OIL AND GAS: MARGINAL FIELDS, ARE THEY NECESSARY?

Marginal Oil Field development is an offshoot of Federal Government policy to fast-track indigenous participation in the upstream sector of the petroleum industry. The government sought to achieve this objective by ensuring the farm-out of marginal fields within the concessions of the major multinational oil operators to indigenous operators |. As the Minister of Petroleum Resources Deziani Alison Madueke said; \"The expectation is that successful indigenous companies will further increase participation in the industry, thus improving their technical and financial capabilities”. The nations current reserve has been speculated to be exhausted within the next 34 to 37 years at the present production level of above two million barrels per day (bpd)* and for a country where the petroleum industry accounts for ninety per-cent of total government revenue and twenty per cent of Gross Domestic Product, the government's anxiety to considerably increase i its reserve base and daily production capacity is understandable’. It is of crucial importance that its oil producing capabilities are explored fully and in the most effective and economic manner so as to realise the policy of increasing daily production capacity to four million barrels per day and have a proven reserve base of 40 million barrels’.