SPDC denies $1.3bn onshore asset sale in Nigeria

The Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Limited, SPDC, has dismissed claims that it sold over $1.3 billion in onshore oil assets to Renaissance Consortium.

A member of SPDC’s legal team, Global Litigation (Sub-Saharan Africa), Mr Kingsley Osuh, disclosed this in an affidavit in a suit numbered FHC/ABJ/CS/413/2024, dated May 24, 2024.

The firm said it “did not sell its onshore assets and facilities in Nigeria to anyone”.

SPDC’s counter application is contending a case instituted by Global Gas and Refining Limited against it and the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission, NUPRC, as first and second respondents.

Meanwhile, the legal team of Global Gas and Refining Limited had approached the court with a suit seeking an order restraining NUPRC from “approving, authorizing, consenting to or otherwise granting the permission for the sale/divestment of the assets of the (SPDC) 1st Respondent”.

The firm’s Executive Chairman, Mr Kenneth Yelowe, deposed before the court that his company, Global Gas, had instituted arbitral proceedings against Shell, alleging it failed to supply wet gas to it in line with the terms of a Gas Processing Agreement dated 15 March 2002.

Yelowe, through his lawyer, Patrick Ikweato, SAN, stated that unless the court grants an order temporarily safeguarding the “assets” in dispute from being sold, its 2002 business deal with Shell may be jeopardized.

But in SPDC in a counter affidavit, Osuh told the court that the dispute between his company and Globus Gas is already before the Supreme Court for final determination.

“The share sale transaction did not and will not affect the 1st Respondent’s 30 percent participating interest in eighteen (18) Oil Mining Leases (“OML”) that are currently part of the 1st Respondent’s Joint Venture, with the 1st Respondent as Operator of the unincorporated Joint venture with Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, Total Energies EP Nigeria Limited and Nigerian Agip Oil Company.

“The sale of the shares held by the shareholder of the 1st Respondent’s neither impacts the 1st Respondent’s continued corporate existence as a Nigerian registered company nor its assets,” Osuh said.

Recall that in January last year, Shell agreed to sell its onshore subsidiary, SPDC, for up to $2.4 billion to Renaissance Consortium.