Nigeria pushes for 50% of Shell’s $25bn global investments for 2017

Nigeria is to push that the oil giant, Royal Dutch Shell, should invest at least half of the proposed $25 billion, which it is planning for global investments in the oil and gas sector in 2017.

In its first quarter 2017 financial results released on Thursday, Shell reported that it posted an income of $2.2 billion in 2016 and was expecting to generate $10 billion in cash flow from the delivery of its new projects between 2016 and 2018.

But an official of the Ministry of Petroleum Resources, who pleaded for anonymity, said government had seen the report and is to press that special attention be paid to the country by the oil giant.

He put it thus: “Nigeria has every right to even demand for more, because it is from its soil that Shell carried out its major oil exploration in commercial quantity.

“Knowing also that there are yet-to-be resolved issues, including oil spillage and others, it will not be asking for too much for the country to request that Shell should plough back some of its profits from where it had reaped abundantly”, he submitted.

However, the Shell report confirmed that with relative peace in Nigeria’s oil-rich Niger Delta region, the company had resumed oil production at 225,000 barrels per day (bpd) in the Bonga Floating Production Storage and the Offloading (FPSO) field covering Nigeria’s deep-waters.

According to the company, the repair of Bonga will ensure sustained production and reduce unscheduled production deferments.

Shell is also involved in a new deep-water project – the 13.5 billion dollars Zabazaba Deepwater project located in Oil Prospecting Lease (OPL) 245.

The net profit, it said, doubled in the first three months of 2017, as rebounding oil prices and refining gains helped boost its revenue.

According to the report, Shell generated a cash flow of 9.5 billion dollars in the quarter, up 13 fold from a year earlier, and the strongest among some of its rivals in the industry.

Shell’s Chief Executive Officer, Ben van Beurden, explaining the details of the investment project said the company needed to open up more windows of investments in the coming years.

“There have been some noticable improvements in upstream and chemicals sectors, which benefited from improved operational performance and better market conditions,” Beurden told journalists.

He said the oil giant currently has oil- “related businesses in more than 70 countries, while Nigeria its oldest oil producing partner.

Shell holds various joint venture and production sharing arrangements with the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and other foreign oil companies.

But it could be recalled that Shell had, in 2016, announced that it was exploring the avenue of establishing a natural gas plant in Brazil, which will compete with the Nigerian Natural Liquefied Gas (NLNG) in which it also has shares.

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