Total said it has completed the divestment of its stake in onshore Oil Mining Lease (OML) 29 to Aiteo Eastern E&P, a Nigerian company, for $569 million.
The oil company noted that together with the recently completed divestments of OML 24 and OML 18, Total’s share of sale proceeds from these three onshore Nigerian blocks amounts to over $1 billion.
According to the Chief Financial Officer at Total, Patrick de La Chevardière, “The sale of these non-operated onshore blocks in Nigeria is yet another example of our strategy of dynamic portfolio management, achieved at attractive valuations. These transactions also reduce our exposure to non-operated blocks onshore Nigeria, and allow us to focus on our core, operated developments, such as the Egina project.”
Total holds a 10% stake in several onshore blocks in Nigeria via the Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) Joint Venture alongside the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (55%), SPDC (30%, operator) and Nigerian Agip Oil Company Limited (5%).
The company also noted that it has divested its interests in eleven onshore blocks to Nigerian companies since 2010, in line with the Federal Government of Nigeria’s aim of developing Nigerian companies in the sector.
The company said it celebrated its fifty years of its presence in Nigeria in 2012, noting that its production in Nigeria was 257,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boe/d) in 2014.
It added that deep offshore developments are one of its main growth avenues in Nigeria, where it operates the Akpo field in OML 130 and launched the development of the Egina field in the same lease in 2013.
The oil giant said offshore production also comes from OMLs 99, 100 and 102, which are operated by the Group as part of a joint-venture with NNPC, noting that the main fields in these leases are Amenam-Kpono, Edikan and Ofon.
On Ofon, the company said it completed the flare-out in January 2015, which will allow for the gradual increase of production towards the 90,000 boe/d production target.
Total said its onshore production comes from OML 58, which it also operates as part of its joint venture with NNPC, noting that a project is under way to increase the lease’s natural gas and condensate production capacity to supply the domestic market.
Total also said it has significant equity production in Nigeria from its interests in non-operated ventures, particularly the SPDC-operated joint venture (10%) and the Bonga field (12.5%), and also has a 15% interest in Nigeria LNG, which operates six LNG liquefaction trains on Bonny Island with a capacity of 21.9 million metric tons per year.
The company said it deploys an active policy to create in-country value in Nigeria, noting that it is helping Nigerian contractors to build deep offshore expertise, especially in the Niger Delta, a region that is home to more than half of Total’s Nigerian employees and most of its operations in the country. It said local content accounted for 90% of the onshore OML 58 projects, and is likely to reach 75% for the deep offshore Egina development.
Source : Independent
