Page 7 - AfrOil Week 46 2019

AfrOil POLICY AfrOil
NNPC head comments on next bidding round, talks on changes in contract law
NIGERIA
NIGERIA will hold its next bidding round sometime next year, according to the head of the national oil company (NOC).
Mele Kyari, the group managing director of Nigerian National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC), said on November 19 that the next licens- ing round would take place in mid-2020. The auctions will cover both onshore and offshore blocks, he said.
He did not say exactly which blocks would be included, but he did state that NNPC saw the bidding round as a step towards achieving its goal of raising Nigerian oil production to 3mn barrels per day (bpd) by 2023.
Kyari also described the auctions as a chance to attract additional investments from inter- national oil companies (IOCs). He stressed, though, that NNPC would not move ahead with the auctions until it wrapped up discussions with various IOCs on the financial implications of recent amendments to the contract law that covers deepwater exploration and development projects. These talks are already underway, and Nigerian authorities hope to complete them by the middle of next year, he said.
He indicated that the NOC was meeting with current investors in a bid to settle the govern- ment’s claim that it was owed as much as $62bn under the previous version of the contract law. Some IOCs have protested against the claim,
but the NNPC head said he remained optimis- tic. “[Despite] the amendments, there is room for negotiations and we hope to conclude these negotiations by mid-next year,” he said.
The amendments to the contract law have been generally unpopular among current inves- tors in Nigeria’s oil and gas sector. As such, Kyari’s comments drew sceptical reactions from some observers, including Ahmadu-Kida Musa, the deputy managing director of Total E&P Nigeria, a local subsidiary of France’s Total. Musa said Nigeria would have to work harder to make itself attractive to IOCs ahead of the bid- ding round.
“There is no doubt that Nigeria has huge bar- rels of oil assets [as] yet untapped. The govern- ment only [needs] to create the right investment climate for operators,” he said at an industry gathering in Lagos on November 19. ™
NNPC head Mele Kyari (Photo: 9newsng.com)
PROJECTS & COMPANIES
Second phase of development underway at Libya’s Faregh gas field
LIBYA
LIBYA’S National Oil Corp. (NOC) said last week that one of its subsidiaries, Waha Oil Co. (WOC), had successfully launched the second phase of development work at the Faregh nat- ural gas field.
In a statement, NOC said WOC had com- missioned the project after testing all of the equipment at the field – namely, gas compres- sors, gas filtration and drying systems, pipeline systems, surface equipment and remote con- trols, plus other backup equipment. These tests showed that the field’s seven wells can turn out 150mn cubic metres per day of gas and 10,000 barrels per day (bpd) of condensate, in line with the company’s expectations, it explained.
WOC’s next step will be a series of laboratory
tests to confirm that gas from Faregh meets the relevant specifications, the company said. 
Phase II gas-processing facility at Faregh field (Photo: J&P Group)
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