The Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN) has stressed the need for the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC) to explain to Nigerians how funds deployed for the drilling of oil at the Kolmani River between Bauchi and Gombe States were expended.
Principal Consultant to IPMAN, Maurice Ibe, who made the call during a television programme on Wednesday, also joined other enthusiastic Nigerians in welcoming the eventual supplying of diesel and jet-fuel to the local market, but cautioned that the impact of the supplies would not be felt by the citizens until after some days.
Responding to a question on the seeming abandonment of the Kolmani drilling project 16 months after former President Muhammadu Buhari flagged-off the project with a lot of fanfare and publicity, Ibe said NNPC was the right authority to provide information on what happened in the project.
The Kolmani River Field, located in-between Bauchi and Gombe States in the Upper Benue trough, had been estimated to hold about 1 billion barrels crude oil reserve and 500 billion cubic feet of gas deposit.
Also, the Kolmani Integrated Development Project, which had reportedly attracted Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) of about $3 billion, was designed to house a 120,000-barrels per day refinery, a 500-million standard cubic feet per day gas processing plant, a 300-megawatt capacity power plant, and a fertiliser plant of 2,500 tons per day.
NNPC is the developer of the field in partnership, with the Northern Nigeria Development Company Limited (NNDC), a company owned by the 19 northern States, and the asset operator, Sterling Global, a Nigerian affiliate of the Indian Sandesara Group.
According to the IPMAN consultant, many of the members of the association had argued for and against the drilling campaign in Kolmani, adding that some people think it was a waste of resources.
Ibe maintained that a lot of money had been spent in the process, noting that NNPC needed to tell the country everything concerning the drilling campaign.
He noted that the key to solving Nigerias problem was the effective functioning of the idle refineries.
