The Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) has announced a comprehensive review of divestments involving 26 oil blocks worth $6.03 billion by five International Oil Companies (IOCs), citing the need for transparency and due process in these significant transactions.
The transactions under review include several major deals that are reshaping Nigeria’s oil and gas landscape: Shell’s $2.4 billion sale to Renaissance, ExxonMobil’s $1.28 billion transfer to Seplat, and TotalEnergies’ $860 million sale to Chappal. NEITI Executive Secretary Dr. Orji Ogbonnaya Orji, who disclosed this during the agency’s first-quarter media briefing in Abuja, emphasized that these divestments are fundamentally altering Nigeria’s oil and gas industry structure, making transparency paramount.
NEITI plans to strengthen its collaboration with the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission and the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited to ensure full disclosure of financial, social, and environmental aspects of the transactions. Dr. Orji stressed particular concern about environmental remediation in oil-producing communities, expressing worry that some divestments may not have adequately addressed environmental damage from previous operations.
Beyond divestments, NEITI also plans to review Nigeria’s forward sales of crude oil, particularly in transactions where oil is exchanged for loans. This comes amid complaints from local refineries about inadequate crude oil supply. The agency revealed that Nigeria had earned $831 billion from oil and gas revenues since NEITI began sector audits 23 years ago, with over $4.85 billion recovered from disclosures made in their 2021 oil and gas report.
Source: nairametrics.com
