logo
Local firms drive new growth phase in Nigeria's oil sector

Local firms drive new growth phase in Nigeria's oil sector

Reuters03-06-2025
LAGOS, June 3 (Reuters) - Nigeria is witnessing a significant shift in its oil and gas landscape as local companies expand their roles, driving a new phase of potential sectoral growth and innovation.
Leading the charge are companies which bought onshore and shallow water assets from oil majors planning billions of dollars of investments to develop abandoned fields.
Smaller producers are also pulling their weight, for example Nigeria's first locally developed and operated onshore crude terminal, Otakikpo, began loading operations on Monday. Built by Green Energy Limited and located in the OML 11 block near Port Harcourt, it marks a milestone in local capacity.
Shell (SHEL.L), opens new tab loaded the first crude cargo through the 360,000 bpd capacity terminal on Monday, opening up potential drilling prospects for over 40 stranded fields in the region.
Similarly, Conoil Producing Limited (CONOIL.LG), opens new tab recently shipped the first cargo of its new Obodo crude blend from the onshore OML 150 in the Niger Delta. The cargo was lifted by Oando Trading, a subsidiary of Oando Plc (OANDO.LG), opens new tab which bought ENI's (ENI.MI), opens new tab divested assets.
Following this trend, Renaissance Africa Energy — after acquiring Shell's onshore assets — is committing to investing $15 billion over the next five years in its oil and gas operations. The company aims not only to balance its portfolio by increasing crude oil production but also to double its gas output once a key local gas pipeline is completed.
Similarly, Seplat Energy (SEPLAT.LG), opens new tab, following its acquisition of ExxonMobil's (XOM.N), opens new tab Nigerian shallow-water assets, recently announced plans to reopen 400 previously shut-in wells. CEO Roger Brown said the company is set to invest up to $320 million this year in drilling campaigns and infrastructure, with the goal of boosting crude production to around 140,000 barrels per day.
"We are focused on reviving existing wells, expanding drilling campaigns, and increasing gas volumes," Brown said during the company's annual general meeting.
While these developments show the increasing role local producers are playing amidst government reforms, they are also grappling with challenges.
"These operators face higher costs due to security challenges, community disputes, oil theft and ageing infrastructure – a key aspect of reducing costs for operators will be addressing these challenges," said Mikolah Judson, an analyst at global risk consultancy, Control Risk.
These local players, signal a new phase for Nigeria's oil and gas sector and could provide support for the government's plan to raise oil output by additional 1 million barrels per day (bpd) next year, head of Nigeria's oil regulator said.
They now account for over half of Nigeria's oil production from around 40% before the oil majors completed their divestment programmes according to the regulator's data.
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Iraqi businessman granted asylum in UK ‘led billion-dollar oil smuggling plot to help fund Iran's terror state'
Iraqi businessman granted asylum in UK ‘led billion-dollar oil smuggling plot to help fund Iran's terror state'

The Sun

time11 hours ago

  • The Sun

Iraqi businessman granted asylum in UK ‘led billion-dollar oil smuggling plot to help fund Iran's terror state'

AN IRAQI businessman granted asylum in the UK has been accused of running a billion dollar oil smuggling plot to finance global terrorism and domestic tyranny by Iran. The Trump administration claims Salim Ahmed Said, 47, has been running a network of firms passing off Iranian oil as a product of Iraq to avoid sanctions for at least five years. Trucks full of cash made from the scheme have allegedly been sent to Iran to finance the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Iraqi Kurd Said became a British citizen after seeking refuge from the Saddam Hussein regime in the UK in the early 2000s. He owns a £27 million hotel in Kensington, West London, and runs two British companies blacklisted by the US Treasury. Said was placed under US sanctions on July 3 but UK authorities so far do not appear to have taken action against him. The US government said that some of the money from the plot had benefited the IRGC's elite Quds Force, a designated terrorist organisation which leads Tehran's overseas operations. The Quds Force is suspected of kidnapping and assassination plots in Britain, the US and Europe and supports terror groups including Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthi movement, and Shia militias in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan. US Treasury documents state: 'Salim Ahmed Said runs a network of companies that have been selling Iranian oil falsely declared as Iraqi oil since at least 2020. 'Said's companies use ship-to-ship transfers and other obfuscation techniques to hide their activities. 'Said's companies and vessels blend Iranian oil with Iraqi oil, which is then sold to Western buyers, via Iraq or the United Arab Emirates (UAE), as purely Iraqi oil using forged documentation to avoid sanctions.' 1

The real Kemi: what everyone gets wrong about the Tory leader
The real Kemi: what everyone gets wrong about the Tory leader

Telegraph

timea day ago

  • Telegraph

The real Kemi: what everyone gets wrong about the Tory leader

My favourite story about Kemi Badenoch happened in a classroom thousands of miles away in the mid-90s. She was 15 and writing an exam when a classmate started cheating with a textbook. Everyone could see it – the boy wasn't exactly subtle about flipping through pages under his desk. But this was Nigeria, where you learned early which battles were worth fighting and which weren't. Making a fuss about cheating meant making enemies. Kemi stood up anyway. 'I studied for this exam,' she said, loud enough for everyone to hear, 'and this guy is here cheating.' The boy was expelled. Word spread around the entire school and Kemi spent the rest of the term as a curiosity in her school. Who was this girl? Many thought her reckless; someone who invited hostility, possibly even violence. I heard from others that what was most odd was that Kemi didn't seem to care. She was so convinced that she had told the truth and done the right thing; her strict Methodist upbringing provided her with a thick skin. In a country where getting by often meant looking the other way, she had refused to look away. It's tempting to see this as the origin story of a future Conservative leader, but the truth is more complicated. Had she lived to adulthood in Nigeria, that fierce sense of right and wrong might have been worn down by the daily grind of compromise that living there demands. Standing out in the crowd in an African country is dangerous, and especially bad for women. There are rules to be followed. When to speak, what to like, what to wear, who to marry. The choice is to follow the rules or to be an outcast. The year she stood up in her classroom against injustice – 1995 – Nigeria was kicked out of the Commonwealth for human rights abuses; the nation she and I grew up in was marked by economic upheaval, military dictatorship and deep-seated corruption. Where Nigeria might have demanded compromise, Britain simply let her be. In Lagos, standing up to a cheater had made her an outlier; in London, it would have made her a hero. The very qualities that marked her as difficult in one place made her formidable in another. Those of us who have known her over the years can trace a clear line from the girl who refused to look away in that sweltering classroom to the woman who still refuses to look away today as leader of the Conservative Party. That freedom is why she loves Britain with a passion that baffles the Left, who cannot conceive of her as anything but a puppet of Right-wing interests. She confounds their tidy expectations of what a black woman should think, say, or aspire to. They believe she doesn't know her place. According to their world view, Britain is a bastion of white supremacy and racial inequality, and a black woman must unequivocally denounce the country. Kemi is an oddball to them. Now, as Conservative leader, she faces the mirror image of this contempt from some on the fringes of the Right: the white supremacists, for instance, who denounce her online as a 'diversity hire', a plant by the WEF, the Jews, or whatever conspiracy is trending that week. They, too, believe she doesn't know her place. Both extremes share the same fundamental error – they cannot fathom that her place is exactly where she chooses to stand. Kemi and I are good friends. But we could not be more different. I prefer to mind my own business and I'd sooner jump off a bridge than run the gauntlet of British politics. Yet in all the years I've known her, I've come to recognise that we share something fundamental: we both found in Britain a place that would accommodate who we are without judgement, yet still possess a set of customs and values that define it as a particular place. This isn't about blind love for a country. It is about understanding the delicate balance between tolerating others and maintaining a coherent identity: there are different shades of British identity, but they are undeniably British. We may express it differently, but we both grasp the same truth: the space to be yourself only exists when certain boundaries hold. She is one of a handful of politicians I see able to make this subtle case with a thoughtfulness lacking in our politics today. Her British identity is not something which she takes for granted – she could easily have followed another route – and this gives her a refreshing insight into this country. Knowing all this about her, I was surprised when a journalist from The New Statesman called me a few weeks ago. He said he wanted to talk about Nigeria in the 1990s. In truth he was fishing for unflattering stories about Kemi. The published article bore no resemblance to the conversation we had: this is a small window into the misrepresentation she faces daily. The online caricatures, the lazy stereotypes masquerading as analysis, the attacks from Left and Right for refusing to be what others expect – she's navigated being misunderstood since that Lagos classroom. Her job ahead may look impossible to some; fixing the Conservative Party's reputation after a tumultuous 14 years in government is no easy task. But those who doubt Kemi, or sneer at her, should consider that her Methodist upbringing prepared her for politics – just as it prepared her 30 years ago to stand up to that school cheat. Standing alone is sometimes the price of standing for something.

Iraqi-British national sanctioned for ‘smuggling oil to fund Iran'
Iraqi-British national sanctioned for ‘smuggling oil to fund Iran'

Telegraph

time2 days ago

  • Telegraph

Iraqi-British national sanctioned for ‘smuggling oil to fund Iran'

An Iraqi-British national has been sanctioned for allegedly smuggling oil to help fund the Iranian regime, US officials said. Salim Ahmed Said is accused of running a billion-dollar smuggling operation via a network of companies trading with Tehran. According to the US treasury, he forged documents and bribed officials in order to disguise the source of the oil, which was then sold to Western buyers via either Iraq or the United Arab Emirates, for at least five years. Some of the profits are alleged to have been sent to Iran to bankroll the activities of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, proscribed by the US as a terrorist group. Said's companies and vessels were allegedly used to blend Iranian and Iraqi oil – one of several 'obfuscation techniques' to launder the supplies so they could be sold on the legitimate market and allow Tehran to evade sanctions. He is also accused of spending millions of dollars bribing members of the Iraqi government in exchange for forged certificates stating the oil originated from Iraq. In addition to owning a UAE-based oil tanker company, with which he is said to have avoided a formal connection, Said allegedly owns two companies based in Britain: The Willett Hotel Limited and Robinbest Limited. 'As President Trump has made clear, Iran's behaviour has left it decimated. While it has had every opportunity to choose peace, its leaders have chosen extremism,' said Scott Bessent, the US treasury secretary. '[We] will continue to target Tehran's revenue sources and intensify economic pressure to disrupt the regime's access to the financial resources that fuel its destabilising activities.' The treasury has also sanctioned several vessels said to have been used in the covert delivery of Iranian oil in a bid to intensify pressure on Iran's 'shadow fleet'.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store