LAGOS, Sept 30 — Chinese state-owned oil company CNOOC is among companies in talks with Nigeria to buy large stakes in some of the richest oil blocks in the world, according to the president’s office here yesterday.
However, no decision has been taken on reassigning the licences that were originally awarded to other producers, Olusegun Adeniyi, a spokesman for Nigeria’s President Umaru Yar’Adua, said in an e-mail yesterday.
The Financial Times (FT) had earlier reported that CNOOC, China’s No.3 oil and gas producer, is bidding for six billion barrels of oil, equivalent to one-sixth of the proven oil reserves in Africa’s second largest oil producer in a deal that could be worth around US$30 billion (RM104.5 billion).
Chinese energy companies have spent at least US$13 billion on overseas assets since December as the global slowdown lowers commodity prices.
Both Yang Hua, president of the listed arm of CNOOC that has been the main vehicle for the firm’s overseas investment, and CNOOC spokesman Xiao Zongwei declined to comment on the report.
If the bid is successful, it could place the company in competition with major Western oil groups such as Total, Shell, Chevron and Exxon Mobil, which partly or wholly operate the 23 blocks under discussion, including sixteen licences that are up for renewal, according to the FT.
Several of the licences reportedly eyed by CNOOC are either close to expiry or under litigation, a senior oil industry source said yesterday.
The FT said the deal was detailed in a letter it had seen from the office of the Nigerian president to CNOOC representative Sunrise.
The letter, dated Aug 13, said an initial offer was “unacceptable”, but added: “Your interest in all the listed blocks will be considered if your revised offer is favourable.”
So far, the largest investment CNOOC has made in Nigeria was a US$2.69 billion stake purchased in 2006 in deepsea oil block OML-130.
Tanimu Yakubu, the Nigerian President’s economic adviser, said in the FT report that China may not secure “anything close” to the six billion barrels it is seeking, saying: “We want to retain our traditional friends.”
However, he added that the Chinese “are really offering multiples of what existing producers are pledging (for licences)”.
In a recent Chinese acquisition of Nigerian oil assets, No.2 oil firm Sinopec Group paid US$7.2 billion for Swiss oil and gas firm Addax, which operates in Nigeria and other African states.
“This is part of the long-term trend among Chinese oil companies to secure resources,” said Michael Yuk, an analyst at Sun Hung Kai Financial in Hong Kong. “I can see increasing bids from Chinese companies for oil assets overseas.”
China’s oil consumption doubled in the last decade, rising to eight million barrels a day last year — 45 per cent of which is imported — from 4.2 million barrels in 1998, according to the BP Statistical Review. A Chinese industry official said in March that China wants up to 40 per cent of its oil and gas imports to come from Africa in the next five to 10 years.
Besides direct acquisitions of oil companies and assets, China has made several multi-billion-dollar loan-for-oil deals around the world. — The Straits Times
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