The Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) has indicated its plans to hold oil bid licensing round annually or biannually as part of its regulatory initiatives to boost the nation’s crude oil production.
The commission’s Chief Executive, Oritsemeyiwa Eyesan, who gave this hint during an interview with S&P Global, said the proposed revised bidding round would encourage new activity by making more assets available to the market and encouraging churn on abandoned concessions.
She clarified: “These will be annual, if possible, even twice-annual events. At a minimum, we’ll be going to the market on an annual basis with a six or seven-month turnaround time on future iterations. We also intend to establish an even faster schedule of regular licensing processes.”
She explained that if adopted new entrants and “drill-or-drop” policies would spur fresh productivity in the sector.
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Eyesan said she was optimistic that the last bid round conducted last month could boost Nigeria’s oil production by 300,000 b/d of additional output in the first three years, adding that the commission is targeting 300,000-600,000 b/d additional production from successive bid rounds.
She expatiated: “New assets will span the country’s deepwater, shallow water and possibly frontier onshore basins, there will be stricter focus on only bringing viable assets to market. I knew we were going to have a problem with some of the blocks and we took a gamble on some licenses.”
“For this round, we were very mindful that the target audience was not overtly going to be the major players in the industry and the new drill-or-drop provisions are designed to prevent the passive ownership that has dragged on the sector”, the NUPRC boss added.
