The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has revealed that the need to boost the nation’s hydrocarbon reserves remained the primary reason the corporation has launched exploration activities across the country, especially in the northern region.

Speaking shortly after being conferred with honorary fellowship of the Nigerian Mining & Geosciences Society (NMGS), Baru, who said the corporation was ready to work with the association to reinvigorate efforts towards growing the nation’s hydrocarbon reserves, said the search is targeted at boosting proven reserves.

“Our search is primarily targeted at increasing the hydrocarbon reserves of the country and also to harness these resources which may be in other parts of the country.

NNPC pledges to continue to work with you and every willing partner in the search for more hydrocarbon deposits in the country,” he said.

Regretting the unfortunate incident, which claimed the lives of some University of Maiduguri staff, who were working on the Chad basin exploration as well as the loss of one of the corporation’s staff working on the Benue Trough exploration, Baru said the corporation planned to drill four wells in areas that it has acquired 1, 961kmsq 3D seismic data out of 3,550kmsq planned in the Chad Basin.

The GMD said: “I pledge on behalf of the NNPC that their sacrifice shall not be in vain. There is no better way to honour the efforts of our gallant heroes than to continue the good work they died for,

“While waiting for normalcy to return to the Chad Basin, we have stepped up efforts in the Lower Benue trough. So far, we have acquired 20km of 2D data out of the planned 455km 2d seismic data,” he added.

He disclosed that NNPC would be going into the deeper Maiduguri sub-basin to acquire more 3D seismic data as soon as normalcy returns to the Chad basin.

On the Gongola Basin, Baru said four wells were also being planned for drilling to further test the prospects identified around Kolmani River-1, Nasara-1 and Kuzari-1 in 2018.

President of NMGS, Prof. Silas Dada said the society was honoured the GMD for his commitment and service to the growth of the country’s oil and gas industry.

What’s inside Nigeria’s foreign reserves?

It was former president Obasanjo who started this whole business of turning the nation’s foreign reserves into an achievement to be celebrated. When Obasanjo took office in May 1999, Nigeria’s foreign reserves were just under $5bn. By the time he left in May 2007, it was $43bn. But beyond that, there was a difference in the composition of the reserves from today. For simplicity, let’s distinguish the two types of reserves as Paper and Cash Money. Out of the $43bn left by Obasanjo, around $11bn was Cash Money.

Cash Money is money in the bank that you have not spent. You can dip into it on a rainy day. The best example of this for Nigeria is the Excess Crude Account. But Paper is quite different. Imagine that in March, Nigeria sold crude oil and earned $1bn from it. That money goes into a CBN account abroad. CBN calculates the naira equivalent at the official rate and gives it to the FG i.e. N305bn. The FG takes the money and pays salaries, wastes some and the rest disappears. The key thing to note here is that once the CBN has given the FG naira, the dollars no longer belong to the FG. The FG cannot spend that $1bn again even though it is sitting there as part of Nigeria’s reserves. So what is it for? Let’s say a guy named Pastor Oyoyo wants to import a set of drums, guitars and hair cream for his new church, Fire for Fire InterGalactic Ministries. The total for all the imports come to $1m. He gives his bank N360m, his bank gives maybe N350m to CBN and CBN gives $1m to his bank. The bank gives him maybe $999,990 and he uses the money to pay for the imports.

So we come to the current reserves. A few days ago, the CBN announced it had hit $46bn. In a recent speech, President Buhari also boasted that his government had grown the foreign reserves from $24bn in 2016 to $46bn today using its special Magique Systeme. But there’s something interesting about this growth – the big change has all happened in the last year or so. What did Godwin Emefiele (popularly called Meffy) do to achieve this? This growth has three components.