243 Oil Blocks: NUPRC Publishes Concession Update, Denies Any Abandoned Assets

The concession status of 243 oil blocks has been revealed by the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Commission (NUPRC), which maintains that the recent newspaper claim that some oil assets were being abandoned is completely untrue.

According to a statement released by the NUPRC yesterday, this action was taken in the spirit of transparency as envisioned under the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) 2021.

Based on statistics from the NUPRC, a recent report suggested that Nigeria currently has 220 available oil blocks dispersed over its onshore and offshore basins.

In its most technically sophisticated but capital-intensive location, the deep offshore terrain is said to have the greatest number of unlicensed blocks (59), underscoring the nation’s underutilized energy resources.

It stated that whereas the Sokoto Basin has 28 blocks that have not yet been allocated and the Bida Basin has 16, the Benue Trough has 41 open blocks and the Chad Basin has 40.

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According to the report, there are still seven unregistered blocks in the offshore Niger Delta, thirteen in the Anambra Basin, and eight in each of the Benin Basin and the onshore Niger Delta.

However, the commission clarified that 220 oil blocks were not abandoned but were instead merely awaiting concessions in accordance with Section 7(t) of the Petroleum Industry Act 2021, which gives the commission the authority to hold regular licensing rounds and award Petroleum Mining Leases (PMLs) and Petroleum Prospecting Licences (PPLs) to potential investors.

The commission added that if requirements were satisfied and recurring bid rounds were held, the 220 oil blocks would be turned over to concessionaires.

The trending story on the alleged abandoned oil blocks, according to the upstream regulator led by GbengaKomolafe, was a misrepresentation of the data it had posted on its website.

For factual information on its operations, the upstream regulator encouraged the public to visit its website at https://www.nuprc.gov.ng/, while advising the media to exercise caution in their reporting and put the interests of the country first.