Daily Independent Online.
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Tuesday, June 22, 2004.
Obasanjo forecloses optional allocation
of oil blocks
By Chuks Isiwu
Energy
Editor, Lagos
President
Olusegun Obasanjo has reiterated the government’s determination not to
return to discretionary allocation of oil blocks, declaring it as
“absolutely unacceptable”.
Instead,
he said, the discretionary allocation of oil blocks had been changed to
competitive bidding based on equity sharing of 50 per cent for the government,
40 per cent for the technical partners and 10 per cent for indigenous
companies.
Discretionary
allocations are contrary to the administration’s cardinal policies of
transparency, openness and accountability, and had been abolished, the
President insisted.
He
spoke while receiving the Managing Director of Nexen Petroleum International
Limited of Canada, Richard Owens, in Abuja.
Owens
told him of his company’s longstanding relationship with Nigeria and its
desire to continue doing business in the country.
The
competitive bidding round, adopted soon after Obasanjo assumed office, departs
from the practice under previous regimes where blocks were awarded without any
form of bidding.
The
system led to the revocation several of the blocks awarded under the Sani Abacha
and Abdulsalami Abubakar regimes.
But
the present administration also awarded some blocks last year to Shell
Petroleum Development Company Of Nigeria (SPDC) and Agip in what industry
observers saw as a return to the previous order.
