The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Etihad Oilfield Services Abdulrahman Bashir has said that drilling activities that started at the Kolmani River-II Well over the weekend will be completed in about 60 days.
Indigenous contractor Messrs Etihad Oilfield Services, a subsidiary of AA&R Investment Group, is the contractor handling drilling operations at the Kolmani River- II Well, a site near Barambu, a village in Alkaleri Local Government Area of Bauchi State.
President Muhammadu Buhari Saturday officially flagged off drilling activities which is expected to confirm the presence of hydrocarbon and the quantity.
The Kolmani River-II Well will be drilled by Ikenga Rig 101 owned by the contractor Etihad Oilfield Sirvices/Drillog Petrodynamics Ltd.
“We are drillers and normally it takes us 60 days to drill a well. In 60 days you can come back and get feedback from NNPC,” the CEO of the company said.
Bashir said the fact that an indigenous service company was handling the project was a testimony that local content is really working.
“We have only three expatriates here not like before when 50 per cent have to be expatriates on this rig. Most of the engineers on the rig are Nigerians,” he said.
Group Managing Director of the NNPC Dr. Maikanti Baru also said the well is designed to be 14,500 feet, deep which would take roughly 60 to 70 days for the NNPC reach its target depth.
“If we reach 14,500 and we still find some interests from the results and it requires that we need to go deeper, this rig is modern, it can go up to 20,000 feet,” he said.
The Kolmani River-II Well is one of four oil and gas wells that NNPC said were being planned for drilling this year on the Gongola Basin to further test the prospects identified around Kolmani River-1, Nasara-1 and Kuzari-1.
Shell had in 1999 drilled the first well in the Kolmani Rever-I but according the Anglo Dutch oil giant the amount of hydrocarbon found was not commercial.
“However, when we read the data, we observed that they did not go deep enough. So, we have come here based on the three dimensional seismic and other subsurface reviews and studies that we have done,” Baru said.
“At the moment, we are looking at deep down, we are looking at kilometers below the ground, nobody has gone there. It is only drilling that would confirm whether there is any resource there and also confirm our professional judgement which we have. So in terms of volumes, types and all that, let us wait.”
