More oil and gas fields that the international oil corporations, or IOCs, have abandoned can now be sold, according to President Bola Tinubu’s approval.
The President has approved the holding of a new marginal field bid for the gas fields that have been abandoned for more than ten years.
During a facilities visit of Waltersmith Petroman Oil Limited’s modular refinery in Ibigwe, Ohaji-Egbema Local Government Area of Imo State, on Wednesday, Senator Heineken Lokpobiri, the Minister of State for Petroleum (Oil), revealed this.
The minister declared that the bidding process will start “soon.”
The process of selling roughly fifty-seven marginal oilfields was effectively concluded last year, with many of the awardees still facing difficulties in moving to the site for asset development, primarily because of funding and regulatory obstacles. The new bid round is being held just three years after the sale of those oilfields.
The minister said that he had received presidential authority to hold a new round of bidding, which will happen shortly, in a statement released by the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB) yesterday.
In order to enable them to produce, he pledged that “marginal fields would (henceforth) be prioritised in terms of their location to those who have modular refineries.”
The federal government of Nigeria, through the policy, provides local corporations with the option to engage more actively in the country’s oil and gas exploration and production area; thus, the marginal field exercise is entirely designated for Nigerian companies.
“Modular refineries should be the quickest way to fix our country’s energy challenge while we wait for the big refineries to undergo their complete rehabilitation,” stated the Minister.
