Mitigating the Effects of Oil Exploration Activities on the Nigerian Environment Using Geospatial Technology.

Oil exploration gives products that help man to do many things, ranging from domestic, economic and industrial. Nigeria, for example, is richly blessed with large deposits of oil, which due to exploration and trade make Nigeria the sixth richest oil exporting country in the world. Oil exploration has also supported a number of developmental infrastructure and economic programs. The gains notwithstanding, oil exploration impacts on the natural environment in a number of negative ways like land degradation, pollution, climate change, terrain despoliation, biodiversity loss, extinction of aquatic life forms, urban congestion, various human health problems and many socioeconomic problems. These have given unprecedented concern to the government to monitor how oil is produced, refined, stored and traded. The core aim of this paper is to set forth GIS as a technology which can integrate data from Remote Sensing, seismic technology and GPS to reduce the adverse effects of oil exploration activities in Nigeria. This paper focused on ways of sustaining the quality of the environment against the negative impacts of oil exploration. How GIS can be used to monitor the various activities involved in oil exploration as well as facilitate government’s efforts to reduce its negative impacts on the environment are examined.