Kyari appraises NNPC’s PSCs renewal deals with Shell, Chevron , ExxonMobil
The oil sector regulator and government operator on Thursday officially declared the era of marginal fields and discretional oil blocks allocation gone in Nigeria.
The Chief Executive, Nigeria Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC), Gbenga Komolafe, and the Chief Executive Officer of the NIgerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC), Mallam Mele Kyari, unanimously said this at the 2022 Strategic International Annual Conference organised by the National Associaton of Energy Correspondents (NAEC) in Lagos.
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Appraising the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA), komolafe maintained that the legislation signed into law by President Muhammadu Buhari on August 16, 2021, “has put an end to the marginal fields era.”
Represented by Dr. Abel Nsa, the NUPRC boss declared; “no marginal fields shall be declared under this era because the PIA provisions have foreclosed this as well as any discretionary allocation of oil blocks.”
Going down the memory lanes, Komolafe said; “30 oil blocks have, so far, been awarded through the marginal oil fields programme. Of these, 2 blocks in 1999; 24 were awarded in 2004, two in 2010 and one before this year.
“As at today, 17 of these oil blocks are currently producing while 13 are not. The PIA has adequately addressed this and Petroleum Protecting Licenses (PPLs) have been awarded to firms based in merit.”
With all these achievements, Crude theft, he said, is still with us and it has become one of the major issues we are addressing as a commission an a government.
“We are planning seven additional regulations in line with provisions in the PIA to guarantee return on every dollar invested in Nigeria over any other jurisdictions.”
In the PIA, Komolafe continued, “host community development Trust Fund has replaced Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) and GMoUs between oil companies and the hist communities.
Also in the act, there are incentives aimed at growing reserves towards realisation of 40bn barrels reserves, there are plans to reward production Milestones, as shown in the Sections 232 and 233 of the act.”
H3 continued; “There is a Road map for tackling the security challenges in the industry, we are collaborating with the security agencies, we are installing gadget for real time loss detection. All these are done according to the provisions of the PIA.
The CEO NNPC Limited, Mallam Kyari who gave the keynote address, appraised NNPC’s PSCs renewal deals with Shell, Chevron , ExxonMobil.
“In the last three weeks, we have settled issues with our partners. We have met the terms and conditions in the PIA,” he said.
Kyari continued; “Our production is very low mostly because of the security challenges in the Niger Delta, and we are working collaboratively with stakeholders in addressing this.
“If we resolve the security issues, we will get back to 2.1 million barrels per day,” he said.
