FG Retrieves 50 Oil Fields from Defaulting Awardees, Insists on ‘Drill-or-Drop’ Policy

The Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) has reclaimed more than 50 abandoned oil fields in a bid to boost the country's oil and gas production. This move is part of the commission's efforts to enforce the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) provisions on acreage management and discourage the practice of 'warehousing' oil blocks by operators.

NUPRC Director of Acreage Management, Olaide Shaw, revealed that these recovered fields have been reintroduced into the licensing process after their previous owners failed to develop them. The NUPRC's 'drill-or-drop' policy aims to compel companies to either progress with their development plans or relinquish the acreage to other investors ready to undertake the work.

Shaw explained that acreage warehousing involves companies accumulating oil and gas acreage without actively developing it, often merely taking photographs and posting them on social media as a show of ownership. To combat this issue, the NUPRC has gone fully digital, allowing for approvals to be made remotely, which has expedited the regulatory process.

Meanwhile, Renaissance Energy, one of Nigeria's leading independent operators, has set an ambitious target to increase its production capacity to one million barrels of oil equivalent per day by 2030. The company's CEO, Tony Attah, revealed that Renaissance is currently producing approximately 265,000 barrels of oil per day and plans to expand this production to about 500,000 barrels per day. Additionally, Renaissance intends to increase its gas contribution to Nigeria to 1 billion cubic feet per day.

Attah emphasized the importance of local collaboration with the NUPRC and the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC) to achieve these production goals. He stressed that the infusion of $100 billion from new investments must benefit Nigeria's domestic economy through the creation of jobs, economic activities, and revenue generation.