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The State is Aware that Shell Will Sell Nigerian Acreages Upon Renewal

Officials in the Nigerian Ministry of Petroleum Resources are aware that the Anglo Dutch major Shell is inclined to divest from several of the 17 onshore acreages it asked the government to renew.

But they have gone ahead to renew most of the licences anyway, because they think it is unlawful not to do so.  The extant licences on the acreages were due to expire in 2019.

“By the regulations we are working with, all these assets we have renewed deserve to be renewed”, Ministry sources categorically tell Africa Oil+Gas Report.

“Shell can take us to court if we don’t renew”, say ranking government officials in the Ministry, who also argue that, with state sponsored bid rounds not having happened in the country in the last 11 years, the frequent Shell lease divestments since 2008 “have benefited Nigerian companies”, who have purchased the stakes belonging to Shell and other international companies in these assets.

As it is, even during the process of renewal between late 2017 and mid-2018, Shell was actively negotiating on the side, with several parties, its divestment from three of the acreages in the renewal basket: Oil Mining Leases (OMLs) 11, 17 and 25.

Shell was asked to pay $820Million for renewal of 14 of the 17 acreages it sought to renew, including OML 25, an acreage that Shell had put in a divestment round in 2014, but failed to sell because of a last minute NNPC invocation of its right of first refusal. Shell, NNPC and several parties have been involved in closing that transaction since that time.

Regarding OML 11 and 17, Shell has, for a while, been negotiating with buyers and has put a $1.2Billion invoice on the table.

It would seem that such asset should not have been renewed, since Shell had demonstrated that it was going to sell them. It would, ordinarily appear intriguing, that the state would renew the licence of an acreage to a company that had clearly shown it no longer wanted it.

Why don’t you put it in a bid basket so that the state gets the benefit of the licencing?, we asked.

But MoPR officials say that Shell has paid all it needed to pay on every asset in the 30 years since they were last renewed and had extensive work programme on each of the acreages, so it would have been illegal to say no to renewal.

Out of the 17 onshore acreages Shell submitted for renewal in late 2017, only three were revoked, at the provisional conclusion of the process in February 2018, “for lack of enough work done over the last 10 years”.

Shell requested for renewal of OMLs 11, 17, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 27, 28, 31, 32, 35, 36, 43, 45, and 46. It succeeded in getting everything renewed, but for four acreages.

OMLs 31, 33 and 36 were denied approval, while the government decided to cut OML 11 into three because it was too large. But Shell has contested the decision on OML 11, arguing that “the proposal would unduly punish” the company, which had conducted operations in the asset “legally and in full compliance with the law”.


Angola Needs to Drill More Oil Wells to Produce Gas

By Sully Manope, in Soyo

Angola’s LNG plant has dropped in production as a result of reduced amount of natural gas that come from the crude oil platforms that supply it.

It sounds intriguing, but the plant relies entirely on associated gas: natural gas which cohabits in the same reservoirs as crude oil.

ALNG’s production capacity is 5.2 Million Tonnes Per Annum (5.2MMTPA). The train can process up to 1.1 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day,

Diamantino Azevedo, Angolan Minister of Mineral Resources and Oil is quoted by Angolan state news agency Angop, as saying that additional investments are needed in drilling more oil wells in the country, in order to increase the natural gas that is channelled to ALNG plant “to reach the installed production capacity.” The minister reportedly added: “This is a challenge that Angola LNG and the country have to take on, in order to achieve capacity and maintain project stability over a long period of time”.

The immediate challenge to Mr. Azevedo’s wish is the immediate status of Angolan rig count. Angolan rig activity figures had crashed from robust 22 in September 2015 to 4 in August 2018, according to the August /September 2018 edition of the monthly Africa Oil+Gas Report.

Angolan LNG has had its fair share of challenges since it came on line in 2013. Barely a year after commissioning, it faced an extended plant shutdown of more than two years from April 2014 to June 2016 to fix a number of design issues that caused an incident on 10 April 2014

That situation led Chevron, the operator, to create an internal project management system to better track contractors and subcontractors on major projects. Chevron is the largest stakeholder in the facility, holding a 36.4% interest, with partners that include Sonangol, 22.8%, and BP,  ENI and TOTAL, with 13.6% each.

 


NDDC: The Necessity of a Rebirth

By Adedayo Ojo

Adedayo Ojo“Akwa Ibom state has some of the best and brightest Nigerian professionals in the oil & gas industry today. Why can’t one of them be seconded to run NDDC? The upstream sector of the Nigerian oil industry is arguably the most efficiently run business sub sector in Nigeria, yet a significant percentage of the management cadre is made up of  Nigerians. Can’t we get one of them to run NDDC? Governor Akpabio pleasantly surprised many when he recently named a technocrat from the banking sector as Secretary to the state government. Why can’t we get him to do the same thing with NDDC?”

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Deregulation or Subsidy Removal?

The twin issues of appropriate pricing of Petroleum products and the (non) functioning of the downstream infrastructure (Refining and Petroleum Products distribution) have dogged the path of every Nigerian minister of Petroleum since 1992.
The then very influential Petroleum Minister, Prof. Jibril Aminu lost his job in June 1992 in response to public agitations over Petroleum products scarcity. That was the first real sign of crises in the downstream sector. Over the nearly twenty year period, no lasting solution has been implemented.

At the core of the crisis is the state of the downstream infrastructure. Our four refineries as well as the distribution network (consisting of 19 storage depots and interconnecting pipelines) were all built between 1978 and 1988. They ran efficiently in their first five to ten years, largely because they were new facilities. The first signs of decay arising from a poor maintenance culture were noticed in 1992. Since then, these facilities have steadily degenerated to the point of near-zero performance today.

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