allAfrica.com: Shell Relocates Exploration Team to Nigeria: “Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria has said it has moved its global exploration unit from Houston, USA to Nigeria.” (ShellNews.net) Posted 16 Feb 05
This Day (Lagos)
Mike Oduniyi
Lagos
Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria (SPDC) has said it has moved its global exploration unit from Houston, USA to Nigeria.
The company, Nigeria's biggest oil producer, also announced that it had successfully spudded (or struck) the first well in the Gbaran/Ubie integrated oil and gas development, as it marches towards raising production to 1.5 million barrels per day (bpd) by 2010.
Shell said the relocation of the exploration unit was "in further demonstration of its commitment to the development of local content in Nigeria.
The company said it aimed to create a centre of excellence in Lagos, through consolidating exploration expertise, previously scattered in four locations- Houston, Rijswijk, Lagos and Port Harcourt.
Under a new structure, there will be a Regional Exploration Director-Martijn Minderhoud. Chike Onyejekwe is Manager for Onshore and Shallow Offshore and Emmanuel Enu, Deepwater Manager, Exploration in Nigeria.
According to Martijn, "Nigeria is very important for the Group, with significant exploration resources. As the new Global Exploration Unit demonstrated early successes, we decided to further encourage the exploration effort here. The drive was to refocus exploration activities in a systematic manner, by drawing on the pool of Nigerian exploration expertise from other locations back to Nigeria."
Shell's deep water success in Nigeria include the Bonga oil field expected to come on stream in mid this year, and the Bolia deep offshore field in OPL 219. The exploration team also played a pivotal role in discoveries made by other Nigerian operators.
SPDC is currently under going major restructuring in Nigeria. The headquarters of Shell Exploration and Production Africa Region had been relocated from the Hague in Holland to Lagos.
The directorates have been grouped into Technical and Non-Technical categories: Production, Technical (Technical); External Relations, Corporate Affairs Human Resources, Commercial and Finance (Non-Technical.)
"The new SPDC organisation took off January 1 2005, enthroning a more nimble and fleet-footed structure that promises to add more value to the way the business is run. The new SPDC is the result of a far-reaching restructuring exercise christened Securing our Future (SoFU) which began more than a year ago." Shell said.
"The programme will enable SPDC reduce its operating costs, increase efficiency and help set it off on a sustained growth parth as operator of first choice," the acompany added.
Meanwhile, Shell said two more appraisal/development well are planned this year for the Gbaran/Ubie field, out of a total of 38 earmarked for the project.
"The drilling campaign in Gbaran/Ubie is unique. We are looking for both gas and oil. So while Gbaran-10 is an appraisal to firm up gas volumes it is also development well for oil," an official said.
Rapid expansion of the NLNG plant at Bonny has resulted in demand for more gas with SPDC's contracted share climbing from 975 million standard cubic feet of gas per day (mmscf/d) to 1,589 mmscf/d, the company said.
The objective according to Shell is to raise gas production to 2.8 billion standard cubic feet of gas and 215 million stock barrels of oil reserves.
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