Posted by By Michael Faloseyi, Abuja on
The pioneer oil company, Shell Petroleum Development Company, on Monday announced plans to return to Oloibiri, where the first oil discovery was made 50 years ago....
The pioneer oil company, Shell Petroleum Development Company, on Monday announced plans to return to Oloibiri, where the first oil discovery was made 50 years ago.
The Managing Director, Mr. Basil Omiyi, at the 30th Annual International Conference and Exhibition of the Society of Petroleum Engineers, said that two exploratory wells were being planned for Oloibiri.
Omiyi recounted how Shell pioneered Nigeria's oil and gas industry onshore of the Niger Delta and how it set the pace for the development of the offshore production that had today added about seven billion barrels per day to the country's reserves within the last seven years.
He, however, declined further details on the company's plan to return Oloibiri.
Meanwhile, the Swiss multinational crude oil production and exploration company, Addax Petroleum, on Monday said that it had attained 100,000 barrels per day production benchmark on Sunday.
The Managing Director, Mr. Martin Eldon, at the SPE conference, said, 'I am proud to announce to you that yesterday (on Sunday), for the first time in our industry, we accomplished production level in excess of 100,000 barrels per day."
He said that his company had achieved improvements in its production level beginning from 8,800 barrels per day in 1988 to 79,460 bpd in December 2005.
The company's production level hit 84,000 barrels per day within the first quarter of 2006 before it moved up to the new record of 100,000bpd over the weekend, he added.
Eldon said that his company's production level was epochal coming at a time when the country was celebrating 50 years of crude oil production.
While pledging his company's support for the government for the local content drive, Eldon said that Addax is now the largest independent crude oil producing company in Nigeria with the new production level attained.