NIGERIAN BILLIONAIRE OIL TYCOON IGHO SONAMI TO ACQUIRE $2.5 BILLION SHELL ASSET

Igho Sonami

Oil giant Royal Dutch Shell has agreed to sell a prolific Nigerian oil block, Oil Mining License 29, and an associated pipeline, for $2.5 billion to a consortium led by Taleveras Group, an oil trading firm founded and owned by a 39 year-old Nigerian multi-millionaire Igho Sanomi, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Shell had been looking to divest from four of its onshore Nigerian assets since last year – OMLs 18, 24, 25 and 29, as well as the Nembe Creek Trunk line, a 60-mile aging pipeline which has served as Nigeria’s major crude oil transportation channel- moving oil through the Niger Delta to the Atlantic coast, but which has been beleaguered by leaks stemming from oil theft for many years.

Taleveras will be getting a sweet deal. Of all the assets, Shell put up for auction, OML 29 was the most coveted. The Africa Oil & Gas Report magazine reports that OML 29’s remaining reserves (P1+P2) are about 2.2Billion barrels of oil equivalent (BOE), while its hydrocarbon fields could deliver as much as 160,000 barrels of oil per day and 300MMscf/d at peak, with focused, aggressive work programme. The Nembe Creek Trunk Line is also an extremely valuable asset as many other oil exploration companies in Nigeria pay to use it to transport their oil to international markets.

According to the Wall Street Journal, a Shell spokesman said the Netherlands-based oil major has signed sales and purchase agreements for some of the oil mining leases that it was looking to divest, and would make a market announcement in the event of a successful completion.


Taleveras Group, the company acquiring OML 29, is owned by one of Nigeria’s most successful young entrepreneurs, Igho Sanomi. Sanomi, 39, founded the Taleveras Group in 2004 at the age of 29, as an energy trading company. Today, the company trades over 100 million barrels of crude oil as well as several million tons of gasoline, LPG and jet fuel annually. In April 2012, Sanomi’s company acquired production sharing contracts (PSCs) for three offshore oil blocks in Ivory Coast. In June 2013, Taleveras sold a 65% stake in one of its Ivorian offshore upstream projects to Lukoil of Russia for an undisclosed price. Taleveras also owns a stake in a power distribution firm in Nigeria.

Source: Forbes