The Minister of state for Petroleum Resources, Heineken Lokpobiri has stated that Shell’s exit from Nigeria’s shallow water fields presents an opportunity for local players who unlike IOC’s will keep their funds in Nigeria.
Mr. Lokpobiri stated this in an interview with Arise TV crew on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos.
He stated that no company within the oil sector is expressing a willingness to depart Nigeria. Instead, he noted that the majority of them are diversifying into offshore assets.
He emphasized that Nigeria stands to lose nothing with Shell’s departure, pointing out that local players have developed the capacity to acquire, manage, and operate these assets proficiently and profitably.
- He said, “Shell that has been in Nigeria for as long as we can remember, and the other IOCs are more interested in going deep offshore so that they could operate at that level. No company is willing to leave not even ENI. No company has said that we are leaving Nigeria”
- “We lose nothing and the local players have also developed so much capacity to an extent that they can acquire these assets, run them professionally and profitably so Nigeria does not lose anything. In fact, in my opinion, this is another opportunity we have where these local players when they takeover these assets and operate them, our money will stay in our country as opposed to the IOCs taking their money abroad”
- “We lose nothing in terms of jobs, in terms of accruals to government, we lose nothing”
Backstory
Earlier in the week, Shell announced the sale of its onshore oil assets in Nigeria to a consortium of local oil companies for $1.3 billion- an amount that will total about $1.4 billion. Shell like other International Oil Companies operating in Nigeria have voiced their intent in divesting from shallow water fields to deep water fields.
The move according to analyst is occasioned by persistent insecurity in the Niger Delta, crude oil theft, pipeline vandalism and problems with local communities.
I’m yet to understand the logics of the minister of petroleum to say that Shell’s exit has no impact when no single local oil company is worth $1billion and doesn’t have the capacity to explore the offshore fileds like shell, it’s a big lost to Nigeria. We need FDIs, we can’t be losing multi billion dollars foreign companies.