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An order by the Federal High Courts in Lagos restrains the federal government from selling a number of the fields. The firms that had been operating in the oil fields had their license revoked and they filed a lawsuit to challenge the federal government. However, the Department of Petroleum Resources, DPR, put the marginal oil fields up for bidding. They reported that there’s been a lot of interest since the 2020 bidding round opened.
DPR has now moved to the next phase after accepting submissions and preparing reports of accepted applications. The current phase of the marginal oil field bidding process looks like this:
- Data prying
- Leasing
- Purchase of reports which began July 6
- Payment of application
- Bid processing fee
When finished with this phase, the submission of the technical and commercial bid would follow. That will end on August 16, 2020.
Mr Auwalu Sarki, the Director of the DPR said during a television program that at least 600 companies applications were received. The director also commented on the next phase of the process:
“After the extension, we are moving according to schedule and now we are in the phase where we do pre-qualification for the bidders to apply”.
The Marginal Fields which are 57 in number are oil fields which international oil companies discovered in Nigeria. Since 2001, there haven’t been any bidding rounds on the marginal oil fields and the 2020 bidding round drew a lot of companies. Sarki attributed the interest to the transparent process set up by the DPR.
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