Shell not leaving Nigeria, investing more in deepwater — Osagie

Shell not leaving Nigeria, investing more in deepwater — Osagie

*NLNG operating at 62% capacities, CEO

*Says insecurity hampering oil & gas firms 

By Obas Esiedesa, Abuja

Managing Director, Shell Petroleum Development Company and Chair, Shell Companies in Nigeria, Mr. Osagie Okunbor on Tuesday insisted the company is not leaving Nigeria despite moves to divest its onshore assets. 

Okunbor who disclosed this during a high-level panel session at the ongoing Nigeria Economic Summit, said the company is concentrating more in the deepwater where it has significant technological and financial advantage. 

The session had the theme, Fuelling growth: The Future of Oil and Gas.

He explained that the company is investing more money in Nigeria with a single project in the deep offshore costing as much as $5 billion. 

“Shell is not leaving Nigeria. We are not going anywhere and we will be together for a long time. Our onshore assets shares are being divested to a consortium of four companies which had gone through rigorous selection process,” he stated. 

He noted that despite pessimism around the industry, Nigeria’s petroleum sector is not in decline.

He said: “Let us not go away from here with the thought that our industry is in decline, it is not. I make bold to say that since the enactment of the PIA (Petroleum Industry Act), and the supporting regulations, we are actually in a much better place. 

“The Presidential directives that have come out are providing the degree of coherence that we hadn’t seen in a long time in the industry,” he added. 

Also speaking at the panel session, the Managing Director, Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas Limited, NLNG, Mr. Philip Mshelbila pointed that it has become critical that Nigeria must grow its economy and diversify the economy. 

According to him, Nigerians have to lead the drive to achieve both the growth and diversification of the economy. 

He said: “If I go back on the need for the economy to grow, it is key that the oil and gas industry participate in that growth as well. We have huge potential and it is important that we diversify.

“But the way that I see diversification in Nigeria is that it needs to be addictive rather than a replacement. If you go back to the 50s and 60s, what happened then was that we had agriculture based economy but it then got replaced with oil and gas as the primary driver of the economy. What we are asking for is not a reversal of that but that both must grow,” he added. 

He explained that the insecurity in the Niger Delta region has limited the growth of the oil and gas industry, noting that it was responsible for driving international oil companies away from onshore operations. 

Mshelbila said this has also impacted the operations of Nigeria LNG with the company’s six trains operating at 62 percent capacity, stressing that Nigeria has not addressed insecurity challenges in Niger Delta.

“To date NLNG has never had problem with financing but our capacity utilisation was in the 40s and year to date our capacity utilisation is 62% which means that roughly about 40 capacities has largely been empty. This is a result of a number of different things; one of them is that investment has slowed over the past decade within the upstream. Coupled with this is the insecurity in the environment,” he stated. 

On her part, the Group COO, MRS Holdings, Amina Maina assured that the ongoing petrol shortage in the country would ease in the coming days as more supply comes from the Dangote Refinery. 

“I think over the next few days those queues will disappear because I’m aware that there are a lot more products that have come into the system. Dangote Refinery has started selling petrol and I’m aware that trucks are going out and a vessel is currently loading. So by the end of this week we should have more petrol from Dangote Refinery,” she added.