Oil giant Royal Dutch Shell has agreed to sell a prolific Nigerian oil block, Oil Mining License 29, and an associated pipeline, for $2.5 billion to a consortium led by Taleveras Group, an oil trading firm founded and owned by a 39 year-old Nigerian multi-millionaire Igho Sanomi, according to theWall Street Journal.
Shell had been looking to divest from four of its onshore Nigerian assets since last year – OMLs 18, 24, 25 and 29, as well as the Nembe Creek Trunk line, a 60-mile aging pipeline which has served as Nigeria’s major crude oil transportation channel- moving oil through the Niger Delta to the Atlantic coast, but which has been beleaguered by leaks stemming from oil theft for many years.
Taleveras will be getting a sweet deal. Of all the assets, Shell put up for auction, OML 29 was the most coveted. The Africa Oil & Gas Report magazinereports that OML 29’s remaining reserves (P1+P2) are about 2.2Billion barrels of oil equivalent (BOE), while its hydrocarbon fields could deliver as much as 160,000 barrels of oil per day and 300MMscf/d at peak, with focused, aggressive work programme. The Nembe Creek Trunk Line is also an extremely valuable asset as many other oil exploration companies in Nigeria pay to use it to transport their oil to international markets.
According to the Wall Street Journal, a Shell spokesman said the Netherlands-based oil major has signed sales and purchase agreements for some of the oil mining leases that it was looking to divest, and would make a market announcement in the event of a successful completion.
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