President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is committed to the drilling activities at the Kolomani Oil Field in Bauchi State and other Frontier Oil Fields in the country.
Minister of State for Petroleum Resources (Oil), Senator Heineken Lokpobri restated the president’s commitment during an interactive session with select media chiefs in Abuja on Tuesday.
Lokpobri said it was not true that the government had abandoned work at Kolomani and other sites in the North, insisting that President Tinubu deserved commendation for giving the project a new lease of life.
According to the minister, on assuming office, the current administration discovered that the licence of the company undertaking the drilling had expired and was not renewed by the last administration.
He said President Tinubu immediately renewed the licence, which enabled the company to immediately return to work.
He said Kolomani remained an integral part of the drive of the administration to ramp up crude oil production in the country.
The Oil Field which lies within the OPL 809 and OPL 810 is in Alkaleri Local government of Bauchi State, along the boundary of Bauchi and Gombe States.
Former President Muhammadu Buhari inaugurated the Oil Field in 2022 as the first commercial drilling of crude oil in Northern Nigeria. But work seemed to have been abandoned soon after, with the company reportedly moving out several of its equipment and machinery.
The Kolomani Field is said to have about one billion barrels of oil and 500 billion cubic feet of gas.