By Teddy Nwanunobi
The Federal Government has begun to receive signature bonuses for its 57 marginal oilfields, as bid winners have begun to pay up, the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Chief Timipre Sylva, has revealed.
Valuechain reports that 161 companies were allocated Nigeria’s 57 marginal fields.
The Federal Government is expecting to rake in no less than $500 million in signature bonuses from the successful companies in the bid rounds which began on June 1, 2020.
Sylva, who made the disclosure during the First Quarter 2021 Ministerial Governance Meeting in Lagos State, added that almost 50 per cent of the successful companies have paid in their signature bonuses to the Federal Government.
“The process has been concluded. Letters have gone out, and people have started paying their signature bonuses. We have received almost 50 per cent of the signature bonuses already. 161 companies were allocated marginal fields.
“I think this is the best we could have gotten. If you followed the process, you will see that we published it, and people applied. The companies were pre-qualified, and assessments of their bids were done by competent persons. That was how the bidders emerged. It was a very transparent process,” Sylva said.
It would be recalled that Valuechain, on Thursday, March 11, reported that the Federal Government had requested from the 161 companies shortlisted as bid winners of the 57 marginal fields on offer in the country’s second marginal field bid round for the signature bonus.
According to the report, the Federal Government, in the third letter the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR), expected the signature bonus, which must be paid within 45 days, to be paid in either Naira or US Dollars.
Valuechain reports that marginal fields are known oil or gas discoveries on an International Oil Company (IOC)-owned bloc, where there has been no activity in, at least, the last 10 years.
With the agreement of the IOC, the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) carves out a piece of land surrounding the discovery, and this becomes a marginal field.
The bid round, which began on June 1, 2020, came about 18 years after the last similar exercise in 2003, and was open to indigenous oil and gas companies, and investors that were interested in participating in the exploration and production business in Nigeria.
The 2003/2004 marginal field bid round was a high-water mark in the annals of licencing rounds in Nigeria in which 120 companies were shortlisted from a bidders’ list of less than 200 companies that applied for 24 fields, with their names all published.