By YANGE IKYAA
The Nigerian minister of state for petroleum resources, Timipre Sylva, on Tuesday said that the conclusion of bid rounds for marginal fields in the country after 18 years is a strong pointer to the Federal Government’s determination to reinvigorate local content in the production side of business in the nation’s oil and gas industry.
These comments were made by him while speaking during the “Practical Nigerian Content (PNC) Workshop” organized by the Nigerian Content Development & Monitoring Board (NCDMB) and DMG Events, in partnership with the Bayelsa State Government, where he was represented by the pioneer executive secretary of NCDMB, Dr. Famous Aseigbua.
He commended NCDMB and DMG for putting together the workshop and also thanked the Bayelsa State Government for co-hosting the event, particularly by providing the enabling environment.
Marginal fields are smaller oil blocks usually discovered by international oil and gas companies but with reserve volumes or quantities below their typical commercial standards of operation, and where there has been no activity in at least the last 10 years. For this reason, they are eventually taken over by smaller indigenous companies through a standard industry bidding process.
Sylva also assured that the emergence of 161 successful bidders for the 57 marginal fields would open a basket of opportunities for growing local capacities across the industry value chain.
“As we go into the new year, the Federal Government will be looking to progress the execution of the AKK project. We would also expect to see more traction with the Train Project 7 and the commissioning of some of the projects being developed by the NCDMB, all of which will add to grow Nigerian content performance,” he said.
After a lag period of 18 years, the bid round exercise for marginal oil fields was finalized in Nigeria on September 15, 2020 but winners were announced later in December of the same year.
During the exercise, no single company was awarded rights to a field alone but a number of companies, ranging from two to three, or even more had to share a single field. However, a company can eventually become a sole holder a field by failure of the other party or parties to pay their signature bonus. As a determining factor in winning a bid, the signature bonus is expected to be shared among parties with winning rights to a field.