The Revenue Mobilisation, Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) has formally received the final report of the Federal Government’s Inter-Agency Committee on Nigeria’s Oil-Producing States, with findings projecting Cross River State to be re-listed as an oil-producing state, the commission said on Friday.
The submission followed a nationwide verification of crude oil and gas coordinates conducted between August 2025 and February 2026.
The 14-member committee, represented by 10 members at the presentation, submitted its findings to the RMAFC Chairman, Mr. M. B. Shehu, after field verification and technical reconciliation of state submissions.
Final plotting of coordinates was carried out at the commission’s headquarters between January 24 and 31, 2026.
The verification exercise involved physical checks, hydrographic validation, boundary reconciliation and security-backed confirmations of crude oil and gas coordinates across more than 12 states, including Cross River and other states with established oil operations.
The committee’s work covered data from 2017 to 2025 and involved extensive field visits and technical reconciliation of submitted coordinates.
For Cross River, projections in the report indicate that the state could regain its oil-producing status with verifiable producing oil wells, particularly from Oil Mining Lease (OML) 114 within its maritime territory.
Technical projections place the state in a position to be re-listed with more than 100 producing wells from verified onshore and offshore reservoir coordinates.
However, the implications of a 2012 Supreme Court judgment are expected to retain some wells, specifically 76 oil wells within Akwa Ibom State’s territory pending further legal clarification, the report said.
Despite this, the verified coordinate data support Cross River’s projective status.
The Inter-Agency Committee comprised representatives from RMAFC, the National Boundary Commission (NBC), the Office of the Surveyor-General of the Federation (OSGoF), the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC), the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), the Nigerian Hydrographic Agency, and security agencies.
The team’s mandate was to scientifically determine the precise location of oil and gas assets within Nigeria’s onshore and offshore boundaries, resolving longstanding overlaps between state boundaries and geological reservoirs.
The report’s submission marks the next step in the process for updating Nigeria’s official list of oil-producing states.
The RMAFC Chairman is expected to forward the Committee’s report to the President for review and implementation. Upon presidential approval, the RMAFC Board of Commissioners will convene a plenary session to approve the operational framework for implementing the new attributions.
