Sale of Eni and Equinor’s Onshore Assets in Nigeria Is Approved
The Nigerian Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) has given the green light for the sale of Eni and Equinor assets to Nigeria’s Oando.
The deals had been pending for months as they required approval from the Minister of Petroleum under the recently passed Petroleum Act. Approvals for ExxonMobil’s $1.3 billion sale to Seplat and Shell’s sale to Renaissance remain pending.
Eni announced the sale of its NAOC subsidiary to Oando in September. The deal included stakes in four onshore oil production leases (OMLs) 60, 61, 62 and 63. However, Oando CEO Ainoji Alex Irune hinted at further complications in the deals on a conference call.
“We had four transactions; two were approved, one was yellow flagged and the other was on hold,” he said.
Nigeria’s biggest oil companies are abandoning their onshore fields, which have been plagued by theft, vandalism and corruption, to focus on deep-sea exploration.
In May, the NUPRC offered to fast-track approval for upcoming asset sales by majors if they accepted responsibility for spills and compensated local communities, Reuters reports.
