Nigeria’s government will approve all oil block licenses that need to be renewed in the first quarter of 2019.
This is according to Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, who said that over $2 billion has been generated to date from oil block license renewals.
“I put a policy of early renewals in place so that even blocks that are not due for renewal before 2019 are being renewed right now,” he said.
According to the Guardian in Abuja, the minister stated that government might not be awarding new oil blocks soon, owing to operators not being able to develop more than half of the operated oil blocks and marginal fields.
He added that because operators have shown a lack of technical and financial capabilities to maintain the fields, a deadline will now be set for the development of all fields, with a focus on marginal fields.
“We are doing analysis on what these people can bring to bear on the time limit between which you must develop the block that you asked for. If you can’t, let somebody else get into it, and try and create a joint venture to find funding,” he said.