The Nigerian Supreme Court ruling on Famfa Petroleum’s stake in the Oil Mining Lease (OML 127) simply affirms the pronouncement of the lower courts with which industry watchers are familiar, if not in respect of the implications for the parties and the country but in terms of defining the “winner” and the “loser”.
With the judgement, Famfa’s entitlement to lift 150,000BOPD, or 60% of the 250,000BOPD production from Agbami is now a done deal. This is huge. To put it in context, the volume is around 6% of Nigeria’s 2.5MMBOPD, and clearly a higher volume than (the French Major) TOTAL’s entire equity production in shallow water Nigeria. Yet TOTAL operates four Nigerian offshore acreages and is the fourth largest producer of Nigerian crude.
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