President Bola Tinubu has approved the sale of further oil and gas properties that have been abandoned by international oil firms, IOCs.
The President has granted the go-ahead for a new marginal field bid for gas fields that have been dormant for over a decade.
Senator Heineken Lokpobiri, Minister of State for Petroleum (Oil), said this during a facilities tour of Waltersmith Petroman Oil Limited’s modular refinery in Ibigwe, Ohaji-Egbema Local Government Area, Imo State, on Wednesday.
The minister stated that the bidding process would begin “soon.”
The latest bid round comes barely three years after approximately 57 marginal oilfields were placed up for sale in 2020 and the process effectively completed last year, with many of the awardees still failing to move to site for development of their assets, owing to finance and regulatory hurdles.
The minister revealed yesterday in a statement issued by the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB) that he had received presidential authority to undertake a new round of bidding, which will take place soon.
He promised that,
“marginal fields would (henceforth) be prioritised in terms of their location to those who have modular refineries, so that they will be able to produce.”
The marginal field exercise is exclusively reserved for Nigerian companies as the federal government through the policy offers opportunity to local firms to participate more actively in the country’s oil and gas exploration and production space.
According to the Minister,
“The quickest way to fix our energy challenge in the country should be through modular refineries, while we await the total rehabilitation of the big refineries.”