The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources (oil), Heineken Lokpobiri, said the federal government was handling the divestment of international oil companies (IOCs) on a case-by-case strategy.
He explained that the government was committed to ensuring that there would not be any bottlenecks in resolving the issues around divestments.
He stated that while the government is handling the cases one at a time, the IOCs would not experience bottlenecks.
The minister disclosed this in an interview with Bloomberg on Wednesday while addressing concerns on the delay experienced by ExxonMobil and Eni in divesting their assets to Nigerian oil companies — Seplat and Oando, respectively.
Lokpobiri said, “These things are taken by a case-by-case basis; Shell will come, Chevron will come – as they come, we are dealing with them, and we are not going to waste time in dealing with them – they will resolve it, all those problems.
“Most of the IOCs are interested in going into deep offshore and you know there is also a lot of local capacity now.
“So in most of the onshore and shallow waters, you see the local companies, which are quite a number – they are over 29 now – are also showing capacity to be able to manage those assets locally.”
It could be recalled that Oando, in September 2023, announced that it had signed an agreement to acquire 100 per cent of Eni’s shares in Nigerian Agip Oil Company Limited (NAOC Ltd).
There were reactions from the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited and other stakeholders of the deal.
Also Seplat in February 2022 announced a deal for the acquisition of ExxonMobil’s entire share in its shallow water business — Mobil Producing Nigeria Unlimited (MPNU).
The deal has not been consummated since then.
