Nigeria’s oil minister has finally approved Shell Plc’s sale of $2.4 billion in assets to Renaissance Group, Renaissance has revealed.
The greenlight comes just two months after Africa’s biggest crude producer decline to approve the sale of Shell’s onshore and shallow-water oil and gas in the Niger Delta region to a consortium of local companies.
The rejection marked a setback for Shell, which has sought to exit the West African oil sector that’s currently plagued by significant oil spills and theft. The Nigerian assets hold a combined estimated volume of 6.73B barrels of oil and condensate and 56.27T cf of associated and non-associated gas.
The Nigerian government approved a similar sale of Exxon Mobil’s onshore oil and gas assets to a Nigerian energy supplier. Last year, Norwegian oil and gas giant Equinor ASA finalized the sale of Equinor Nigeria Energy Company (ENEC) to local firm,Chappal Energy.
Interestingly, Shell’s approval comes days after the company announced it has taken a final investment decision on its long-delayed Bonga North deepwater project off the coast of Nigeria, the country’s first major deepwater development to move ahead in several years.
According to Shell, Bonga North will be a subsea tie-back to the Bonga floating production storage and offloading facility, which it operates with a 55% interest.
Shell’s partners in Bonga North are Exxon Mobil-owned Esso Exploration & Production with a 20% stake, as well as TotalEnergies and Nigerian Agip Exploration with each owning 12.5%
With an estimated recoverable resource volume of more than 300M boe, Bonga North is expected to reach peak production of 110K bbl/day, with first oil expected by the end of the decade.
The project involves drilling 16 wells – 8 production wells and 8 water-injection wells – installation of new subsea hardware tied back to the FPSO and modifications to the existing Bonga Main FPSO.
Source: Oilprice.com
Discover more from Energy News Africa
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.