The ministry of Mines and Steel Development has revealed plans to auction its bitumen block in the third quarter of the year.
Minister of Mines and Steel Development Arc Olamilekan Adegbite made this disclosure in response to the enquiry of the Australian High Commissioner who visited the ministry on Tuesday.
He however stated that the ministry was still gathering data on some of the bitumen field and was edging close to completion.
He noted that there were ample opportunities for investors in the local development of bitumen sector. “A lot of people are interested in bitumen which is coming from both local and foreign investors. However, we are still acquiring data in some of the fields and once the data is in we will go for auctioning in the third quarter,” he said adding that PWC, was advising the ministry on its bitumen development road map.
Adegbite also disclosed that the ministry was working on raising the quality of barite produced in the country to internationally acceptable standard which is known as American Petroleum Institute (API) standard.
He said the ministry had contracted a consultant to help raise standard in the local production of barite to ensure that the oil industry players begin to use barite produced in Nigeria as against importing from other countries.
“We are also working on the local production of barite. Barite is a critical weighting material in Drilling fluids used in oil industry. We have a lot of barite but the issue is that it is not produced to API standards. However, we are putting a system in place which would be ready to launch in about July. We have got the millers who can produce barite to API standard. Hence we will be able to compete with foreign ones and it would save Nigeria a lot of foreign exchange in import substitution.”
Australia High commissioner to Nigeria John Donnelly expressed his country’s willingness to work with Nigeria to develop the mining sector.
