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Wednesday, July 21, 2010
The Nigerian Petroleum Development Company (NPDC), the producing unit of Nigeria’s state-run Nigeria National Petroleum Corp. (NNPC), is set to take over Shell Petroleum Development Co.’s (SPDC) Ogoniland assets. According to BusinessDay NPDC will enter into partnership with SPDC, which was forced to abandon the fields well over a decade ago over the Ogoni crisis that led to the death of environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa.
Confirming the development, the managing director of NPDC, Abbiye Mambere, told BusinessDay at the Petroleum Roundtable conference organized by the Center for Petroleum Information, that negotiations for the oil fields would be completed soon, as getting the fields operational is part of the growth plan of the company.
Shell will hand over the operation of the fields to NPDC who will hold NNPC’s interest in the fields. Mambere said that NPDC will take over the operations of the oil fields as part of the steps to grow its reserve base, adding that NPDC hopes to hit 500 million barrels in reserves in the near future. “By 2015, the company is expected to hit 750 million barrels of reserves. By 2011, more sophisticated technological equipment would be deployed for acquisition of seismic data.”
The area includes about 30 wells with a production capacity of approximately 50,000 bpd. The wells also produce natural gas for domestic and industrial use, but crude production is currently shut down due to on-going repairs of an export pipeline damaged in late 2008.
Shell had publicly called for reconciliation among Ogoni and offered to clean up oil spills that had occurred in the area since it left, regardless of their cause. In June 2008, the government announced it would replace Shell with another operator (possibly the NNPC) in Ogoniland as the best solution to end the stalemate between the company and the community.
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