Page 9 - AfrOil Week 01 2020

AfrOil POLICY AfrOil
 The vote won praise from Abdirashid Mohamed Ahmed, Minister of Petroleum and Natural Resources. “This is a major step forward for Somalia and its people, as the Petroleum Law is approved by the upper house and moves closer to completing its legislative process,” he said.
The Petroleum Law is now ready to go to the president, who must sign it before it can take effect. Somalia’s government has not said when President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo might take this step.
According to previous reports, the Petro- leum Law empowers the government to estab- lish the agencies needed to oversee the oil and gas sector. It also provides for revenue sharing between Somalia’s federal states and the central government. Additionally, it lays the ground- work for the signing of production-sharing agreements (PSAs) with investors.
Somalia is not a hydrocarbon producer and has yet to sign any contracts for oil and gas exploration and development. In February 2019, it unveiled plans to launch its first off- shore licensing round, saying it was gearing up to offer foreign companies the chance to bid on 15 blocks covering an area of 75,000 square km. According to Ahmed, seismic data collected from the area indicates that the blocks may hold as much as 30bn barrels of oil.
The bidding round has already been delayed several times. In November, the Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources said it hoped
to launch the auctions sometime in 2020 and would reveal further details in December. As of press time, though, it had not yet done so.
Somalia has said it will offer licences for Blocks 219, 218, 204, 190, 189, 179, 178, 177, 166, 165, 164, 153, 152, 142 and 131. It has also said that none of these sites lie near the con- tested maritime border with Kenya.ratified ™
Somalia will auction off 15 blocks (Image: SomaliaLicensingRound.com)
PROJECTS & COMPANIES
Nigeria planning to resume work on Ogidigben gas complex
NIGERIA
NIGERIA’S federal government has announced the revival of a major natural gas initiative that has been on hold for the last five years.
Timipre Sylva, the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, said on January 6 that the country was ready to move forward on the Ogi- digben project, which will require investments of $16bn.
The scheme envisions the construction of a gas complex at a 27-square km site in the Warri South-West council of Delta State. The com- plex would include a central processing facility, a petrochemical plant and a fertiliser plant, as wellasa350-MWgas-firedthermalpowerplant (TPP).
According to Sylva, although work on the project has fallen far behind schedule because of unrest in the Niger River Delta, the government is still committed to building the complex. “The Ogidigben Gas Project isn’t abandoned at all, I can tell you that,” he remarked. “Unfortunately,
before now, [the] Ogidigben project was affected by security issues. When they tried the project, there were some security issues around it and the investors got worried.”
Despite all of the delays, Nigeria is still keen to proceed, he said.
“[We] have also started discussing the Ogi- digben project again. If you listened to me while I was in Riyadh last year, the Ogidigben project was [on] the front burners, and it is a project that we really hope to achieve. And I believe that between us and the communities, [with] co-op- eration and peace from the area, the project can beachieved.”
The minister was speaking just a few weeks after Ogiame Ikenwoli, the king of Warri, asked Nigeria’s federal government to resume work on the Ogidigben initiative. He explained the request by saying that the complex could have a tremendous positive impact on Delta State’s economy.
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