The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources (Oil), Heineken Lokpobiri, has threatened to cancel the licences for marginal oil fields that have not been producing petroleum.
Speaking at the just concluded Nigerian Economic Summit Group in Abuja, Lokpobiri said the lack of optimum utilisation of marginal fields is one of the reasons Nigeria is having low production of crude oil.
He claimed that from the over 100 licenses that were given, only three were producing oil.
“A few years ago, we did marginal oil field allocation, only about three from over 100 are producing. The three years given to them are over, they will shout my name, but I will cancel them.
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“If you are given the field, it is not a souvenir to keep. It does not add value to you or our country. If today, the marginal fields were producing, we would be able to get sufficient feedstock for our modular refineries and increase our total production quota,” he also said.
He lamented that everyone is interested in the field but they have no capacity both financial and technical to put the assets to use.
“You are not doing any help to yourself. After all, you paid money to acquire the assets, when you were acquiring it; there were terms of the acquisition. 99 percent of them have already breached the terms of the agreement.
“I will not look at anybody’s face. I will do my part, which is to ensure we do things differently by giving these assets to those who can put them to good use.”
“If today we rehabilitate our refineries, we have no feedstock. The marginal fields, even if they are producing up to 50 per cent, will have several thousands of barrels per day.”
He however emphasised the need to grow production of the upstream sector in the oil sector for the mainstream and downstream to be successful.
