A two day onboarding workshop for newly awarded holders of petroleum prospecting licenses, themed,”from award to production:Delivering Nigeria’s upstream potential under the petroleum industry act, 2021″ has come to a close with a strong warning from the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission, NUPRC to the newly awardees to either drill or face sanctions.
The commission chief executive, NUPRC, Mrs Oritsemeyiwa Eyesan, gave the warning in Lagos on tuesday, October, 20, during the session where she also disclosed the commission’s plans to support the newly awarded holders of (PPLs) that emerged from the 2022/2023 and 2024 licensing rounds.
“With this renewed support, the NUPRC also expects the 22 awardees to contribute at least 250,000 barrels of oil per day to the national production volume”, Eyesan said, adding that Nigeria remains on course to hit 3mmbopd by 2023.
The commission chief executive who advised the new awardees to learn from the successes and mistakes made by past winners restated the October 31, 2026 deadline for the revocation of idle oil and gas licenses in line with the drill or drop provision enshrined in the petroleum industry act.
“We have issued a directive that by end of this month,those who were awarded licenses, and have not done anything within the stipulated time- three years for those onshore and five years for those offshore- the commission will call in those blocks” Eyesan also stressed.
The two day workshop took awardees through five thematic technical sessions from award of the license to production of first oil. Focus areas included: Regulatory framework, work programme, exploration, appraisal and commerciality, field development, well operations and production including exploration financing.
