The notorious track record of favouring certain section of the country in appointments in oil and gas sector by President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration has fueled concerns that the 2020 marginal oilfields bid round may lack transparency, reports Ejiofor Alike
The first marginal field to be awarded in the country was the Ogbelle field allocated to the Niger Delta Petroleum Resources Limited in 1999 to promote indigenous participation in the industry. However, the Okwok and Ebok marginal fields were awarded in 2006 and 2007, respectively, to Oriental Energy to compensate the company for losing part of OML 115 to Equatorial Guinea, following a boundary adjustment exercise between Nigeria and Equatorial Guinea.
One of the major reasons why the majority of the companies could not quickly bring their assets on stream was due to what the Chief Executive Officer of Seplat Petroleum Development Company Plc, Mr. Austin Avuru had described as a “marriage of strange bedfellows.” Apart from the issue of “marriage of strange bedfellows”, majority of the other companies that were awarded the marginal assets lacked the financial and technical knowhow to develop their assets.While transparency was not an issue in the previous bid rounds as the exercises were transparent and competitive, there are strong concerns about the transparency and credibility of the 2020 marginal fields’ bid round process also being handled by the Department of Petroleum Resources .
Some of the investors who spoke to THISDAY hinged their fears on the fact that the heads of all the agencies under the Ministry of Petroleum Resources, and other oil and gas-related agencies, except perhaps, the Nigerian Contempt Development and Monitoring Board , are from a particular part of Nigeria.
Though former President Olusegun Obasanjo had initiated efforts to enthrone open, transparent and competitive bid rounds in the award of oil blocks, the Petroleum Act still empowers the Minister of Petroleum Resources to award oil acreages on a discretionary basis, a process that was frequently abused by past military administrations.