Oil company Shell plans to sell Nigerian oil fields

Royal Dutch Shell has put Nigerian oil fields worth $5bn up for sale as it seeks to reduce its reliance on the African country, where the government is making it harder for foreign oil companies to do business.

Shell’s relationship with the Nigerian government has become strained, with Shell filing dozens of lawsuits against the national oil company over pay. Tapping and attacks on pipelines have also seen spillages of hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil.

Potential buyers for the oil fields could be Sinopec, a Chinese state-owned oil company, or Nigerian company Oando. Afren, listed in London, is thought to be another possible contender. Shell is said to be sending out technical data on the fields and inviting proposals.

The sites for sale are reportedly onshore and mainly in the west of Nigeria. Shell is not selling its offshore sites, which are less vulnerable to attack and have better royalty terms. Separately, Shell signed a deal to develop a huge Iraqi oil field, along with Malaysia’s national oil company Petronas. The companies will plough tens of billions of dollars into the Majnoon oil field near Basra, after winning the rights to the site in an auction earlier this month. The Iraqi cabinet must now approve the deal.

The Majnoon site in southern Iraq is one of the world’s largest untapped oil fields, containing an estimated 12.6bn barrels of oil.

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