By Toye Olori
LAGOS, Jan 25 2002 (IPS)

The search for oil in northern Nigeria, which began in 1994, came to an end this week following a declaration by the companies that there was no oil in that part of the country.

The multinational oil companies – Shell, ExxonMobil, Agip, ChevronTexaco and TotalFinaElf, which began drilling activities in the Benue Trough covering six northern states in 1994 – have begun to withdraw following strings of poor results from their drilling efforts.

The outgoing Chairperson and Managing Director of ChevronTexaco, Ray Wilcox announced in Lagos on Tuesday that “there wasn’t any hydrocarbon reserves in the basin”.

“We (oil Companies) have spent tens of millions of dollars shooting seismic, gathering information and searching for oil. We all know the risk but still went ahead with the search. But there wasn’t any hydrocarbon reserves,” he said.

“We do not have any intention to go back there,” Wilcox said.

Energy sources say that more than 3,000 seismic surveys had been conducted since 1994.

Oil exploration has become a highly politicised issue because Nigeria’s estimated 110 million people depend on the proceeds of the commodity.

In 1993, the regime of the military leader, Sani Abacha allocated a total of 12 blocks to the firms in the basin that spread across the northern states of Nasarawa, Gombe, Plateau, Adamawa, Bauchi and Yobe. The decision by the late head of state, Abacha to allocate the blocks followed data from the Department of Petroleum Resources that the Trough, stretching 60,000 square kilometres, contained hydrocarbon volume of 500 million barrels.

Critics said the search for oil in the north, where Abacha came from, was a ploy to balance resource control with the Niger Delta that has been agitating for the control of revenue from their oil- producing terrain.

Shell, in partnership with ExxonMobil and Agip, got three blocks, Elf three, while Chevron had six blocks. The companies paid three million dollars as signature bonus on each of the blocks.

The mood of expectant northerners was one of excitement and pride, then.

“We are very excited about the prospect of having petroleum in our community. You can see our excitement by the number of inhabitants who turned out to watch the beginning of what will put us on the world map,” Hussain Kirfi, former chairperson of Alkaleri Local Government, told IPS in an interview in Bauchi, northern Nigeria, in Sep 1994.

Newspapers in the region also joined the chorus. The “Hotline Magazine” in 1994, for example, said “Now that the north has oil … we can now go to the negotiating table (with the south) as equals.”

Before and soon after independence in 1960, agriculture was the mainstay of Nigeria’s economy with cocoa, coffee and rubber coming from the west; groundnut and cotton from the north and palm oil from the east. But agriculture was relegated to the background soon after the discovery of oil in the early 1970s.

Nigeria’s post-independence constitution, which was discarded by the military when it overthrew an elected government in 1966, allocated to the states 50 percent of total national revenue. The emergence of oil as sole revenue earner brought about the changing of the allocation to the states at 13 percent, a situation that has led to agitation among oil-producing states in the Niger Delta for higher allocation.

Figures by energy experts show that hydrocarbon deposit in the oil-rich Niger Delta stretches across 75,000 square kilometres with recoverable reserves of more than 20 billion barrels of oil and 300 trillion cubic feet of gas.

Oil from the Niger Delta accounts for 90 percent of Nigeria’s foreign exchange earnings, making the West African country the sixth largest exporter of crude in the world.

Energy watchers say the discovery of oil in the Benue Trough would not only have boosted the participation of Northern states in the oil business, but would have also helped the government in its plan to increase crude oil production next year.

Nigeria, with an oil reserve of about 25 billion barrels, produces about two million barrels a day. In its short-term plan, the government has envisaged increasing production to three million barrels per day in 2003.

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