TheCable

Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu, minister of state for petroleum resources, says the federal government will begin tracking its crude oil production in 2019.

NAN reports that Kachikwu, who made this known in a podcast released in Abuja on Monday, said the federal government is working with the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) to create an IT platform to monitor crude production.

“There is the issue of crude tracking – how do we track every molecule of products we have, crude and refined products?

“We are putting together an IT platform that will enable us do this. We are working with DPR and hopefully, by 2019 the issues of whether we could not account for our crudes will no longer occur.

He said the federal government is planning to conduct a licensing round for the award of oilfields in inland basins to companies to prospect for crude oil,

According to him, the government is also working on the rules to guide the process which will be conducted along with the marginal fields bid round.

“We are planning our marginal fields’ rounds and we are also planning our inland basins rounds. It is going to be a transparent process to bring people to get us more oil.

“The rules are going to be out soon once it is approved by His Excellency.”

The inland basins in Nigeria are Niger Delta, Chad, Anambra, Benue Trough, Benin, Sokoto and Bida basins.

He further stated that following the exit from the joint venture cash call arrangements with multinational oil and gas companies, the country had received investment requests amounting to over 15 billion dollars.

“We were able to exit the joint venture cash call. Still a bit of things to be ironed out there but for the first time, multinationals began to have belief in their need to invest in the country.

“The amount of investment requests we are seeing from joint venture cash call members is today in excess of 14 to 15 billion dollars, which are for purposes of projects like Zabazaba, Bonga extension programmes and all that. Multinationals are beginning to have confidence that this system is working.”