A competitive bidding process would likely be used for next year’s slated oil licensing round, according to Head of the Department of Energy (DoE) Dr. Mark Bynoe.
Bynoe told a press conference yesterday that given the fact that the DoE plans to complete the review and gap analysis of the existing petroleum legislation by the end of this month and that it has completed a template production sharing agreement (PSA) that will be used to guide all other contracts, it is expected that the Department would be in a position to engage in another licensing round that is currently scheduled for the first quarter of 2020.
“As the Department has been on record indicating, this is likely to be a bid round. We are also aiming to conduct a multi-client seismic survey for data packages to encourage greater interest in the shallow continental shelf. This survey will be tendered as have all other recruitment that the Department has been engaged in,” he explained.
