The Nigerian deep offshore ranges from 200 meters water depth and deeper. Exploration efforts started in 1993 with the award of 18 blocks to 12 concessionaires. This was immediately followed with aggressive seismic campaign, culminating in the acquisition of some 25,000 line kilometres of 2D and over 30,000 km2 of 3D seismic. To date 34 exploration wells have been drilled in the deep offshore out of which 6 wells found oil in quantities for hub-class development while a further 5 wells penetrated potentially commercial oil volumes.
With a major contribution from the deepwater discoveries so far, the aspiration to increase the National Reserves Base to 40 billion barrels oil recoverable and a daily production of 4 million bopd by the year 2010 appears realisable. Presently, Bonga (SNEPCO) and Abo (NAE) have reached field development stages, while most of the remaining identified commercial oil discoveries are in an advanced stage.
This success story has been associated with the great encouragement given to investors by the Nigerian Government's existing fiscal regime.
The challenges ahead, as with many other deepwater E and P operations, will largely be dominated by:
exploration risk
reducing deepwater costs through new technology
minimising the time between discovery and first oil
global competitiveness for investor's funds
commercial terms for producing Nigeria's huge deepwater gas volumes
maximising local content
oil price
environmental issues
protection from OPEC quota curtailment The giant oil fields discovered to date by leading multi-national oil companies, their ability to move ahead with multi-billion dollar investments in the new democratic environment, indicate that these challenges are surmountable.
Nigerian Deep Offshore went through new block allocations in the year 2000. The enthusiasm manifested in this exercise was partly due to the prolific nature of the deep offshore basin and Nigeria's keen determination to attract foreign investors by providing an open and transparent bidding process.
There is no doubt that following the current trend, the scramble for the Nigerian Deep Offshore blocks will continue to be very competitive and exciting.
BLOCK 1 - - FORUM 1 7 NIGERIA DEEP OFFSHORE: APPRAISAL OF ACTIVITIES FROM 1991–2001 AND FUTURE CHALLENGES
Oil exploration in Nigeria began as far back as 1908 with the enactment of the Mineral Oil Ordinance. The first attempt was by a German company, the Nigerian Bitumen Company around the sight of oil seepages in the Araromi area of south west Nigeria. The First World War terminated the company's effort. A second attempt by Shell D'Arcy (the forerunner o