Nigeria on track to hold marginal oil field bid round in 3 months: minister

Alison-Madueke

Nigeria still plans to hold a bidding round for 31 marginal oil fields within three months, despite the non-passage of key oil and gas legislation, the country's oil minister Diezani Alison-Madueke said Wednesday.
"We are working as hard we can to try and have one. We want to do it right, the rounds we had in the past were not very successful. We are still hoping to roll it out in the next three months," the minister said on the sidelines of OPEC's Wednesday meeting in Vienna.
Alison-Madueke flagged the marginal field licensing round in November but since then little has been heard about the process.  
Nigeria last held a major oil licensing round in 2007 for blocks in the Niger Delta and other new basins, but plans for a subsequent auction have been held up by the delays in putting in place the new oil law.
Marginal fields are small fields discovered by oil majors but abandoned due to low reserves and productivity as well as higher overheads.
In the first major licensing round for marginal oil fields held by Nigeria in 2002, the country handed out licenses to 24 small oil fields relinquished by major oil companies including Shell, Total and Chevron.
But only eight of the 24 fields handed out in the 2002 round are in production, according to government data.
Operators have cited a lack of funds and unrest in the Niger Delta as major challenges that have slowed the development of the remaining 16 marginal fields.
Nigeria, OPEC sixth-largest crude oil exporter, currently produces around 2.3 million b/d including condensates, according to Alison-Madueke, with more than 90% of this from multinational oil companies.
"We've had crude oil sabotage so our 2.5 million b/d target has not been maintained," she said.