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Stop This Senseless Giving Away of Nigeria's Lucrative Oil Blocs By Senior Fyneface When it was said in an earlier article that the Obasanjo-led administration has beaten all existing records as the administration that has given away more oil blocs in lucrative frontiers than the cumulative number of acreages given out by all the governments that ruled the country since independence, it was not taken seriously at all. As if the administration is not tired of doing funny things, the newly appointed substantive energy minister, Dr Edmund Daukoru recently declared, in line with the thinking of the Presidency on oil matters, that bid for the sale of Nigeria's offshore oil blocs, suspended last year, has tentatively been fixed for around the middle of February this year. "The bid round will come up at about the middle of February. This is however tentative," he disclosed. "There are one or two things we are putting together ahead of the bid round. It is still premature to say the exact number of blocs to be put on sale", he said, adding that a committee was working on the issue. Nigerians need not worry much about those things the new minister claimed “a committee is working to put together”. The first and obvious one is who in the Presidency and PDP gets what bloc using Chinese, Korean and/or Indian traders or at best inexperienced oil companies as fronts. The Federal Government last December suspended the sale of about 65 oil blocs initially anticipated for the last quarter of 2006, after the last exercise was bedeviled by controversies, allegations of fraud and shady deals involving grabbing of lucrative oil blocs outside the bid exercises and ceding of acreages to political loyalists of the ruling party. The DPR Director, Tony Chukwueke, had in October last year told journalists that the government was increasing the number of blocs up for tender to 60 from 50 previously, owing to increased interest by Asian investors. Just about three months from the last declaration, the number of oil blocs up for grabs has increased to 65 and may still go up in the Obasanjo-led administration’s desperate effort to empty all the remaining oil blocs belonging to Nigeria before quitting office in May this year. "We have had a flood of investors from Asia who are interested in our downstream sector, so far as we give them opportunity in the upstream and this is forcing us to increase the number of blocs on tender from 50 blocs initially announced to 60 (rather 65)," the embattled DPR boss had said. The poser for the DPR director and his boss, President Obasanjo is: Who are these so called Asian oil investors? In what arena (in their home countries or abroad) have these Asians played in oil business both upstream and downstream? It is a good news that these Asian oil gurus are massively indicating interest in participating in the nation’s downstream sector but what is very clear is the reason for dashing lucrative deep offshore oil bloc to any committee of friends that merely indicates interest in doing business in Nigeria. The pathetic thing the administrators of the petroleum ministry and the Presidency have shielded from Nigerians is that majority, if not all, of these alleged Asian investors have neither two coins to rub each other as investment capital or definite plans to secure offshore funding for the business in the Nigerian Oil industry. The situation is very annoying and Nigerians must rise up not only to condemn such robbery but to stop it completely. Why is it that the known and active oil majors operative in Nigeria had been mischievously excluded from participating in the series of bids for oil blocs in the bubbling deep offshore arena? This question becomes more pertinent when viewed against the background that the active oil companies had helped develop the nation’s oil sector to the current enviable status not only in the entire south-west coast but across Africa despite the NNPC’s cash call irresponsibilities. And to say that the new government policy gives preference to companies that agree to invest in the downstream sector of the industry is an outright nonsense. In the first instance, is there any existing energy policy especially with respect to the upstream sector? The answer is a very big No. The things that look like policies are those executive directives straight from the Presidency to –whom- it- may- concern. And majority of those directives are selfish, fraudulent and worst still very un-informed in terms of the technically status. How else could someone have described the ‘daashin’(in local parlance) of a very lucrative oil bloc to a company like Starcrest (a trading company) just because the owner of the company is a close associate of the Presidency and a major financier of the ruling party. To the best of my knowledge, Nigeria remains the only OPEC country where the nation’s apex oil concern have been stupidly encouraged to be more interested in generating peanuts from foolish lease of very lucrative oil blocs to jokers in exploration and development rather than fashion ways of doing more serious minded business with such acreages. Hear what the Government representative in charge of the bid exercise said: “Nigeria which derives more than 95 per cent of its foreign exchange earnings from oil, hopes to realize about $500 million from the bloc bid round”. If this is not an insult to the Nigerian elites, tell me what anybody can call such pronouncement especially against the background that majority, if not all, the voodoo companies awarded previous blocs had understandably refused to pay-up their license fee. Even those that mustered enough will power to pay a meager part of the fee, the money could not be properly accounted for rather Nigerians were bombarded by the crossfire between DPR and the NNPC on who was supposed to have collected the monies. Interestingly, during the period both organizations worked and directly reported to President Obasanjo before the confirmation of Dr Daukoru as substantive minister few weeks ago.
SENIOR FYNEFACE, ELELEWON STREET GRA II, PORT HARCOURT. |