Shell Companies in Nigeria, have reiterated that the company is not leaving Nigeria despite moves to divest its onshore assets.
The Managing Director, Shell Petroleum Development Company and Chair, Shell Companies in Nigeria, Mr. Osagie Okunbor, stated on Tuesday that the company is not leaving Nigeria despite moves to divest its onshore assets.
Okunbor who disclosed this during a high-level panel session at the ongoing Nigeria Economic Summit, said the company is concentrating more in the deepwater where it has significant technological and financial advantage.
The session had the theme, Fuelling growth: The Future of Oil and Gas.
He explained that the company is investing more money in Nigeria with a single project in the deep offshore costing as much as $5 billion.
“Shell is not leaving Nigeria. We are not going anywhere and we will be together for a long time. Our onshore assets shares are being divested to a consortium of four companies which had gone through rigorous selection process,” he stated.
He noted that despite pessimism around the industry, Nigeria’s petroleum sector is not in decline.
He said: “Let us not go away from here with the thought that our industry is in decline, it is not. I make bold to say that since the enactment of the PIA (Petroleum Industry Act), and the supporting regulations, we are actually in a much better place.
“The Presidential directives that have come out are providing the degree of coherence that we hadn’t seen in a long time in the industry,” he added.
Also speaking at the panel session, the Managing Director, Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas Limited, NLNG, Mr. Philip Mshelbila pointed that it has become critical that Nigeria must grow its economy and diversify the economy.
According to him, Nigerians have to lead the drive to achieve both the growth and diversification of the economy.
He said: “If I go back on the need for the economy to grow, it is key that the oil and gas industry participate in that growth as well. We have huge potential and it is important that we diversify.
“But the way that I see diversification in Nigeria is that it needs to be addictive rather than a replacement. If you go back to the 50s and 60s, what happened then was that we had agriculture based economy but it then got replaced with oil and gas as the primary driver of the economy. What we are asking for is not a reversal of that but that both must grow,” he added.
