United States oil giant ExxonMobil has disclosed it will be investing over 2 billion U.S. dollars annually in the exploration and production of oil and gas reserves in Nigeria, local newspapers reported on Thursday.

The investment is to ensure that ExxonMobil can achieve a production capacity of 1.0 million barrels per day (bpd) in Africa 's biggest crude exporter by 2010, said Jide Ayo Vaughan, Deepwater Operations Manager of Esso Exploration and Production Nigeria Ltd., a subsidiary of ExxonMobil.

This can also help the oil major contribute substantially to meeting the Nigerian government's goals of increasing oil production to 4.5 million bpd and grow reserves to 40 billion barrels, said Vaughan at a west Africa offshore meeting in Abuja, citied by Nigeria's This Day newspaper.

"Last year we established a vision for our upstream business in Nigeria, to grow and sustain gross operated liquid production to over 1 million bpd by 2010, and we are well on our way with an exciting year ahead of us," he said.

Vaughan listed projects on the card to achieving this target as including the 2-billion-dollar Erha deepwater field development that will produce 150,000 bpd, the Yoho offshore field expansion project and the East Area Additional Oil Recovery project.

ExxonMobil is the second largest oil company in Nigeria after Royal Dutch Shell, producing 600,000 barrels of oil per day.

Source: Xinhua