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Nigeria, Sao Tome to award new oil blocs
next month
By Chuks Isiwu
Energy
Editor (Lagos)
and Bassey Udo
Snr
Correspondent (Abuja)
Four
new oil blocs in the Nigeria-Sao Tome and Principe Joint Development Authority
(JDA) are up for grabs next month, mainly by interested companies in the two
countries.
A
decision to contract them out was part of the resolution of the 8th Joint
Ministerial Council (JMC) of the authority, which ended in Abuja at the
weekend.
The
JDA was directed at the two-day parley to formally announce the termination of
the 2003 Joint Development Zone (JDZ) Licensing Round and in its place begin
the process for the second licensing round in December.
At
the end of first round, held in April 2003, Chevron Nigeria Limited, the
exploration and production company of Chevron Texaco Corporation in Nigeria,
won the premier bloc-out of the nine slots on offer.
It
was awarded the operatorship of the blocs with ExxonMobil and Dangote-Energy
Equity Resources on equity percentage ratio of 51:40:9.
Since
then, negotiations of the Production Sharing Contract (PSC) among the
contracting companies, which commenced last May, could not be approved because
the Joint Operating Agreement (JOA) between the operating partners is yet be
concluded.
Though
the JMC expressed satisfaction over the progress so far made in the
negotiations, it urged the JDA to accelerate the process and ensure its
conclusion before December.
During
the meeting, Nigeria’s Foreign Affairs Minister of State Abubakar Tanko,
who presided, voiced the concerns of the two governments on the need for
additional oil blocs to be awarded to help generate the desired level of
activity as well as revenue required to fulfill the aspirations of the people
of the two countries.
In
the next licensing round, only four of the seven oil blocs left after the 2003
round would be up for bids. Blocs 7, 8 and 9 would be excluded for technical
reasons.
It
was learnt that the three oil blocs, located in the zone’s ultra
deep-water concessions, are to be excluded since the JDA still needs to carry
out extensive 3-Dimentional seismic data acquisition on them to determine their
potential.
As
in the first licensing round, the next one would be conducted without prejudice
to the rights to any of the blocs already exercised by Environmental
Remediation Holding Corporation (ERHC) and validated by the JDA, as well as the
pre-emptive rights of ExxonMobil.
PriceWaterHouse
Coopers has been appointed auditors of the JDA 2003 Accounts and President
Olusegun Obasanjo has approved the appointment of two executive directors into
the JDA board.
They
are H. A Tukur (Finance and Administration) and S.U Obiorah (Monitoring and
Inspections).
Sao
Tome and Principe also recently appointed two new executive directors into the
board. They are Carlos Gomes (Commercial and Investments) and Jorge Do Santos
(Non-Hydrocarbon Resources). Gomes is the current board Chairman.
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