The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation has announced that it had secured a one point two billion dollars multi-year drilling financing package for thirty-six offshore and onshore oil wells under the NNPC-Chevron Nigeria Limited Joint Venture.

According to the corporation, the funding is packaged by a consortium of indigenous and international lenders, and is an integral part of the Accelerated Upstream Financing Programme initiated by the NNPC to address the perennial challenge being experienced by the Federal Government in providing its counterpart funding for Joint Venture upstream activities.

The NNPC, in a statement issued by its Group General Manager, Group Public Affairs Division, Mr. Ohi Alegbe, said the initiative, apart from supplementing the country’s cash-call commitments, would also help in the maintenance of current production levels in the short term as well as replacing depleting foreign reserves.

The corporation said stage one of the project, comprising nineteen wells, is projected to deliver twenty-one barrels of crude oil per day alongside one hundred and twenty million standard cubic feet of gas over 2015 and 2016. Stage two, comprising seventeen wells, is projected to yield twenty thousand barrels of crude oil per day alongside increase in gas production between 2016 and 2018.