Locational Effects of the Civil War on the Nigerian Petroleum Industry

ALTHOUGH the search for crude oil in Nigeria was initiated in 1908, active exploration for petroleum did not begin until the 1950's and did not become widespread until after the Suez Canal was nationalized in 1956. Oloibiri and Afam, the first successful oil wells in Nigeria, were located in what was then called the Eastern Region,1 and subsequent intensive activities in the exploration for and the exploitation of crude oil were concentrated east of the Niger River (Fig. 1).2 Although discoveries of crude oil had been made since 1958 in the MidWestern State, west of the Niger River, commercial production did not commerce there until 1965. Prior to that date, the then Eastern Region was the only area of commercial crude-oil production in Nigeria. A major problem associated with the commercial exploitation of crude oil in the Mid-Western State was transportation from inland oil fields to coastal terminals. The 140-mile-long TransNiger Pipeline, which was completed in 1965 by the Shell-BP Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Limited, provided a temporary solution.3 The pipeline linked the Mid-Western State oil fields with the crude-oil export port at Bonny (Fig. 1) and thus enabled the state to embark on commercial crude-oil production at Ughelli, Kokori, Eriemu, Olomoro, and Uzere. In March of the same year another oil company began commercial production in the Okan oil field (Fig. 1), located offshore along the coast of the Mid-Western State. By the end of the first quarter of 1965, the

Agricultural economics · Archaeology · Crude oil · Geography · Middle East · Oil field · Oil production · Petroleum · Petroleum engineering · Petroleum industry · Submarine pipeline · Environmental Engineering · Environmental Science · Geology · Natural Resources and Economic Development · Oceanography

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