Aiteo Group one of Africa’s leading conglomerates ,leading a consortium of five other companies has won the bid for the Royal Dutch Shell’s prolific Nigerian oil block, Oil Mining License 29 and an associated pipeline with a bid of $2.85 billion.
According to statement issued by the Corporate Communications Unit of the company which was made available to our correspondent yesterday, the acquisition of OML 29, as well as the Nembe Creek Trunk line, a 60-mile pipeline which has served as Nigeria’s major crude oil transportation channel- moving oil through the Niger Delta to the Atlantic coast, is a major boost for Nigerian Local Content Development initiative.
“The Trunk Line is also an extremely valuable asset as it is also a vessel for other oil exploration companies in Nigeria pay to use it to transport their oil to international markets
“This acquisition has deepened Nigeria’s indigenous participation in oil and gas exploration. Aiteo the major shareholder in the consortium purchase of Shell’s assets has promised to put its competence to bear in this new deal, which will see it execute the local content to the later.
“This is expected to translate to the creation of over 20,000 jobs in the exploration and production sub-sectors of the oil and gas industry. The Nigerian content implementation had increased the level of participation of Nigerians in oil and gas contracts to 87 per cent,” the statement said.
It has been established that OML 29’s remaining reserves (P1+P2) hold about 2.2Billion barrels of oil equivalent (BOE), while its hydrocarbon fields could deliver as much as 160,000 barrels of oil per day and 300MMscf/d at peak.
