31 onshore, offshore fields for sale – Minister

The Federal Government is pushing ahead with its decision to sell the nation’s four refineries by 2014. The Minister of Petroleum Resources, Mrs. Diezani Madueke, who disclosed this on Thursday however, reassured that government would rehabilitate the refineries before their privatisation in 2014
She said 31 oil fields will be placed on offer; 16 of which are located on-shore, while the remaining 15 are in the continental shelf.
To ensure that local investors are not left out, the Minister advised the local firms to form consortia to increase their capacity to win the fields.
Mrs Alison-Madueke, gave kudos to the Nigerian companies which have been operating marginal fields licensed in 2001, saying they have done very well.
According to her, “Over the next two weeks, the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) will undertake a road show to different parts of the country about the programme.
“This will be followed by a three and half months of competitive bidding process in line with the federal government’s commitment to openness and transparency in the conduct of business activities in the country.
“In carrying out the exercise, government is determined to ensure that proper technical and financial due diligence is done on companies indicating interest in these assets.
“In this regards, government encourages companies where possible to bid in consortia to enable the parties leverage upon each other’s strengths.
“It is now therefore my honour and privilege to flag-off the second marginal field licensing round with 31 fields on offer; 16 of which are located on-shore, while the remaining 15 are in the continental shelf.”
Justifying the decision to place the oil fields and refineries on sale, the Minister said “We are moving for the privatisation of the refineries in the first quarter of 2014. At this point in time the negotiation round for the turnaround maintenance of the Port Harcourt Refinery is now completed.
“We started with the TAM with the original contractors who built the Port Harcourt refinery and this was with the intent on ensuring that the right people carried out this TAM once and for all. Unfortunately the actual negotiation have extremely been a long drawn out one because of the prices they came in with at the get go.
“It has taken a number of months of very aggressive robust negotiation to get to the point with Port Harcourt Refinery where we can actually begin to implement the work. Port Harcourt is now on the move in terms of TAM and once that is close to completion Kaduna and then Warri will continue”, she said.
“The intent was to ensure that government does not sell the refineries when we do privatised in the worst possible state to ensure that we get some commercial value for these refineries which are still, I think, in very decent shape but need a lot of refurbishments and a lot of update in terms the core technology that they use.
“That is the situation right now but we will kick off the privatisation round. We will have all the due discussions and negotiations with the unions in that period of time as well to ensure that we are all working together to make this happen and ensure that it is a win-win situation for all parties at the end of the day.
“But it goes without saying that over the last 20 years government has not done too well at handling major infrastructure and government should not be in the business of handling major infrastructure. So let the private sector come in and let us a little more competitive efficacy in the handling of these major entities for us to the betterment of all the people of our country and our economy”.