Nigeria Petroleum and Gas News

Nigeria, the largest oil producer in Africa and sixth in the world, will on Tuesday declare the date for the 2007 round of bids for the oil blocs, officials said on Monday. Energy Minister Edmund Daukoru on Tuesday " will announce the date and detailed procedure for the 2007 bid round for oil blocs," AFP, quoting spokesman for the state-run oil firm Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Levi Ajuonuma, said. The announcement will likely specify the number of blocs to be put on auction and their locations, officials said. Bidding for the sale of Nigeria's offshore oil blocs was suspended several times last year. The Nigerian government last December suspended the sale of some 60 crude oil blocs until 2007, officials from the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) had said last January. The DPR director, Tony Chukwueke, had in October told journalists that the government was boosting the number of blocs up for tender to 60 from 50 previously, owing to increased interest by Asian investors, they said. "We have had a flood of investors from Asia who are interested in our downstream sector, in 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," Chukwueke had said. Nigeria, which derives more than 95 percent of its foreign currency earnings from oil, hopes to realize about 500 million dollars from the bloc bid round, he added. The country normally produces about 2.6 million barrels of oil per day of which a quarter has been affected in the past several months by the restiveness in the oil-rich Niger Delta. Around 40 Nigerian troops and dozens of Nigerian oil workers were killed by separatist militants in the delta last year while more than 60 foreigners, mostly oil workers, were abducted.