Oil fields under litigation not part of 57 marginal fields listed for bid rounds – DPR

SARKI AUWALU, THE DIRECTOR, DEPARTMENT OF PETROLEUM RE SOURCES (DPR), has said that oil fields under litigations are not part of the 57 oil fields offered by the federal government for competitive bid round.

According to a statement issued by the DPR at the weekend, Auwalu said the 57 oil fields listed for bidding are small oil fields that major oil companies considered unprofitable and auctioned to indigenous companies under a competitive bidding round.

DPR had on Monday last week launched its first licensing round for marginal oilfields 17 years after the last auctioned was conducted.

The fields that are on offer are located on land, swamp and shallow offshore terrains. The present bid rounds will last 10 weeks and conducted electronically, according to Auwalu.

Auwalu said the reasons for offering the fields for sale under the current economic situation as coronavirus ravaging the world is to encourage local investors to collaborate and grow the nation’s oil sector

The last marginal bid rounds were undertaken in 2003.

The DPR boss also stated that there has been stable profile of gas flare volume between 2017 and 2019 which stands at about 300billion cubic feet (bcf ) per annum.

“This is the time to invest when the crude oil price is at the lowest. We encourage companies to come together and embrace these opportunities. Its time we need to grow our oil reserve and the industry ”, he stated

Auwalu who was elated by the response of industry players to the bid round exercise said: “We are so impressed by the responses so far. For so long the industry has been stagnant to increase its reserves and one of the strategies to increase our reserves is through this exercise”, he said

He disclosed that Nigeria crude oil reserves and condensate now stands at 36.89billion barrels (bb) as at January 1, 2020, against 36.97billion barrels recorded at the same period in 2019, a decline of about 82million barrels representing 0.22 percent.

However, the nation’s proven gas reserve recorded a marginal increase of 1.16tcf at 203.16trillion cubic feet (tcf), 0.57 percentage increase, against 202tcf recorded at the same period in 2019.

Auwalu, said the department has set new targets of 210tcf by 2025 and 220tcf by 2030.

Nigeria had in 2003 planned to achieve 40 billion barrels crude oil reserves by 2020.