Shell made the approval of the sale of its controversial assets in the Niger Delta a condition of fresh investments off the coast of Nigeria, according to people familiar with the deals. The Anglo-Dutch company said on Monday it had made a final decision to invest a reported $5bn in the Bonga North project, a deepwater field 130 kilometres off the west African coast. The investment is a boost for President Bola Tinubu’s drive to attract much-needed capital into the Nigerian economy.
Two days later, Shell said its deal to sell $1.3bn of onshore oil assets to Renaissance Africa Energy, a local consortium, had been approved by Nigeria’s petroleum ministry, 11 months after it was first announced. The approval is a sharp turnaround for a deal that was rejected by Nigerian regulators in August and faced significant obstacles, including questions over how decades of environmental damage would be cleaned up, as the Financial Times has reported. Three people familiar with the talks said conversations between Shell, Tinubu and his officials centred around the company’s wish to continue investing in Nigeria, and to commit resources to the deepwater oil sector and lucrative liquefied natural gas projects in the country. But Shell also made clear the need for it to exit the onshore assets, whose 68-year history has been marred by ecological damage from oil spills and tensions with communities in the Niger Delta, the people said. Nigeria’s government was minded to assure Shell that its exit deal would be approved as Abuja sought investment in the oil and gas sector, they added. One of the people close to the deal said Shell’s sale of its troublesome onshore assets to Renaissance “was important — don’t get me wrong. But it wasn’t just this one deal alone. The conversation was about the larger investment context in Nigeria and how Shell wanted to be a part of that.” Shell declined to comment on the link between the two announcements. Renaissance also declined to commen
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