Nigeria’s 2020 marginal field bid winners have 2 yrs to deliver first oil
*DPR charges marginal fields operators on community relations
The Department of Petroleum Resources, DPR, has said oil and gas companies who become successful in the 2020 marginal fields bid rounds have just two years to deliver their first oil.
Engr. Sarki Auwalu, DPR’s Director and Chief Executive Officer gave the hint during the Nigerian Association of Petroleum Explorationists, NAPE webinar series held on Wednesday.
According to him, the federal government expects bidders to already have both funding and technicalities already prepared for production and should launch into exploration immediately upon winning, adding that the bidding would be held electronically.
Mr. Auwalu explained that the federal government is poised to give support to the winners in terms of providing advisory roles to them on how to go about meeting the target.
“There is no magic to developing fields. Already, we have 16 marginal field operators producing in the country, and we have seen how they went about it. So, government is prepared to help winners succeed by giving them aggressive work implementation tactics.”
He added that before opening up this year’s bid rounds in June, the Department had embarked on various studies to help investors become successful.
“We have seen how other marginal oil and gas firms became successful, and as long as funding and other things are on ground, it is possible to achieve first oil in two years,” he said.
He advised marginal field operators to engage in better community relations in order to be more successful in their businesses.
“What we have seen is that indigenous marginal field operators do not take community relationships seriously, and so they end up facing apathy from the host communities,” he said.
“We advise that they bring themselves low to the level of their host communities in order to succeed,” he added.
The commencement of the 2020 oil bid round is coming 18 years after the first one was conducted in 2002.
According to the DPR guidelines on the 2020 oil bid round exercise, and payment by interested bidders will attract non-refundable chargeable fees as follows, Application fee of N2 million per field, Bid Processing Fee of N3million per field, Data prying fee of $15,000 per field, Data Leasing fee of $25,000 per field, Competent Persons Report of $50,000 and $25,000 for Fields Specific Report.
With the above, interested bidders are expected to pay a total of $115,000 in statutory fees and another N5 million in local currency.
At the official exchange rate of $360/$1, the 57 oil fields on offer gives N2,364,800,000 including the N5 million payment.
SOURCE: financialenergy.com
