Nigeria’s state oil company has spudded a key appraisal well in the country’s frontier Chad basin, targeting some 1 billion barrels of potential oil resource.

Nigeria’s inland sedimentary plays have been ignored for decades compared to the prolific onshore and offshore plays of the Christian heartlands of the Niger Delta, but the outgoing government of President Muhammadu Buhari has always promoted the oil and gas potential of the country’s Muslim-dominated north.

In 2020, for example, he paved the way for a successful drilling campaign in the Benue Trough.