Lagos — Nigeria has renewed 25 oil block licenses with a total earning of $1 billion in the last one year.
Data made available to Daily Trust yesterday by the regulatory agency - Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) - also showed that it has granted approval for 16 new field development plans with capacity to increase the nation's oil and gas production by 560,463 barrels per day when fully commissioned.
The Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) last year said in its oil and gas report that discretionary decision-making and lack of openness drove down competition and returns to Nigeria, including over $2 billion in unpaid signature bonuses.
But a source told Daily Trust that the renewal of the licenses boosted revenue for government to fund its budget and improve the nation's upstream investment by ensuring security of tenure given the long gestation and pay back period for the oil and gas investment.
Some of the oil blocks that got DPR's renewal nod were those that belong to International Oil Companies (IOC) and some indigenous oil companies, a sources told Daily Trust yesterday.
Although no available data from the DPR on the renewed licenses, Daily Trust identified some of the companies whose oil licences had expired to include AITEO/NNPC with OML 29. The oil block license expired last month; Amni's OML 112 expired on February 2, 2018; Atlas Petroleum with OML 109. The license expired since May, 2016; Conoil' OML 103 expired since March 2013. OML 111 belonging to Nigerian Petroleum Development Company, a subsidiary of NNPC expired in 2016.
