Shell sees $6 billion worth of oil and gas investment opportunities in Nigeria, the country’s presidency said following a meeting of senior executives of the supermajor with Nigerian officials.
Zoë Yujnovich, Shell’s Integrated Gas and Upstream Director, and the top executives of Shell’s Nigerian unit, Shell Nigeria PLC, held talks on Thursday with Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in Abuja.
According to presidential spokesperson Ajuri Ngelale, Shell has identified a $5 billion investment opportunity in Nigeria’s offshore oil exploration and production, and has said it would invest another $1 billion within 10 years to ramp up natural gas production in Nigeria for domestic supplies and exports.
The presidential spokesperson cited Shell’s Yujnovich as saying that the oil and gas supermajor has “an imminent $5 billion investment opportunity” in the Bonga North oil project offshore Nigeria, Reuters reports.
“I am really keen to make that investment as soon as possible. We want to continue and build a pipeline of new investments in Nigeria,” Yujnovich was quoted as saying.
A spokesperson for Shell confirmed to Reuters that company executives held talks with the Nigerian president but declined to provide details because the discussions were private.
Nigeria has struggled in recent years to boost its oil and gas production, and has consistently failed to produce to its quota under the OPEC+ agreement. The combination of pipeline vandalism and oil theft with a lack of investment in capacity has made Nigeria the biggest laggard in crude oil production in the OPEC+ alliance.
Shell has had its fair share of troubles in Nigeria, including several lawsuits from local communities in recent years over oil spills, for which the supermajor denies responsibility and says that oil theft and criminality are major sources of pollution. Theft is the cause of the majority of spills in the latest claims from communities that were allowed to proceed by the High Court in London last month, according to Shell.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
