The President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), on Tuesday inaugurated the commercial production of crude oil and gas from the Kolmani Integrated Development Project.
Located in the Gombe and Bauchi fields, the Kolmani project, with oil prospecting licenses 809 and 810, is located in the Gongola Basin of Upper Benue Aska, between the two Northern states.
The field, according to its promoters, will start producing 50,000 barrels of crude oil per day and has one billion barrels of oil reserves, bringing Nigeria’s oil reserves to over 38 billion barrels.
In his speech at the event, Buhari said the facility had attracted $3 billion in investment despite the lack of enthusiasm in the oil sector.
He said, “Given the landlocked location and the high capital requirement, the economics of the project is challenging.
“Consequently, from the outset, I mandated NNPC (Nigerian National Petroleum Company) Limited to use and leverage its vast portfolio of assets in all corridors of its operations to de-risk the project to attract the necessary investment. I have mandated NNPC to continue in this direction.
“Therefore, it is to the credit of this administration that at a time when the appetite for investment in fossil energy is almost zero, along with the challenges of location, we are able to attract more than $3 billion in investment to this project.”
Buhari described the ceremony as an important one in Nigeria’s economic history, “as we approach oil and gas production in the Upper Benue Trough, specifically the Kolmani River oil and gas field, between Bauchi and Gombe states.”
