The hope of the people of Bida Basin in Niger State to join the league of oil-producing community in Nigeria has heightened with the discovery of what looks like hydrocarbon deposits in the area. Abu Nmodu reports.
The history of Niger State is just about to be re-written: its status is likely going to transit from a solid mineral-producing to an oil-gushing state, if the current effort it is putting in that direction yields the required results.
If indeed, what has been found in the Bida Basin turns out to be hydrocarbon and in the right quantity to support commercial oil production, then the state and its people have every reason to roll their drums to the street in self adulation.
The confirmation that there are hydrocarbon deposits is just what the people were waiting to hear. They do not seem to worry about the confirmation of the quantity of the minerals in the basis for now.
Their joy seems to have hit the rooftop when the committee raised by the Niger State Government last year to look into the quantity of hydrocarbon deposit in the basin reported that their finding was positive. The committee worked in conjunction with the Ibrahim BadamasiBabangida University, Lapai to determine the extent of the deposits.
In turning in the epoch-making report, the Secretary of the Bida Basin Development Committee, Yabagi Yusuf Sani, that the progress report on the availability of hydrocarbon deposit in the area was positive.
“The result of the analysis of samples collected so far has shown high prospect in certain acreage so far explored,” Sani said, adding that the environmental impact of the programme had also been examined by the team.
Sani explained that the first phase of the programme had been completed with surface geological mapping and production of geological prospective maps as well as the identification of areas of thick sediments and geological sinks in the basin where large amounts of samples were collected during the field mapping.
According to him, the outcome of the committee’s work is to present to investors what is available in the basin, with all the indices for such studies readily established by the finding.
“So, the effort of the Niger state Government is to bring the prospects of the basins to the investors that there are hydrocarbon deposits in the place with a view to enabling them to take the next step with a sense of confidence,” the secretary said.
The Bida Basin Hydrocarbon Exploration Research is divided into four phases namely: Geological mapping and sample collection, shallow core-hole drillings and sample analysis, geophysical evaluation and sediment logical logging and commercial packaging, business incorporation, lease acquisition and drilling for oil and gas”.
As uncertain as oil exploration at Bida Basin is, like any other hydro carbon exploration, the people of the area are already in high spirits, warming up to join the league of oil production states in Nigeria. They are overjoyed by the development, which many of them believe would change their fortunes and bring them into new economic dawn and social socio-economic status in Nigeria.
Many of the indigenes of the Bida Basin said they could not wait to see the emergence of oil refinery in the area so as to reap the benefits of oil production.
“It is a very important development that we believe has come at the right time and we believe it is coming to change our status and fortune,” one of the community leaders, Alhaji Suleiman Naikia, told our correspondent.
The state government has already indicated its readiness to build a refinery in Baro to process the potential oil to be explored there. This arrangement is also coming in the wake of the decision of the federal government to construct a dry port in area as part of the dredging of the River Niger.
The Mua’zuBabangidaAliyu administration appears to have hit the bull by the horn with the setting up of the MuhammedInuwaWushishi committee on October 15, 2011 to look for oil in the Bida Basin and explore the possibility of building a refinery in Baro.
The chief servant, as he is widely referred to, may as well make history as the first governor in the north whose state will be earning revenue from oil, if the hydrocarbon quantity in his state is large enough to support commercial oil production in the months to come.
If that happens, the Bida and Sokoto basins, which have remained the only two of such in the country yet to produce oil blocks for auctioning by the Federal Government, would soon join the league and earn hard currency for the country.
That is the prayer that seems to be running on the lips of every native of Niger State. How soon their prayer becomes reality is left at the mercy of the God, though.