Nigeria aims to host an oil and gas roadshow to woo back international energy companies that quit its onshore sector, a senior government official said on Monday.
Africa’s top oil exporter, has struggled to raise production after international oil companies including Shell and Exxon exited its onshore fields to focus on deep offshore exploration.
The Nigerian government had hoped that local companies could reverse output decline from the Niger Delta.
Felix Omatsola Ogbe, the head of a government board set up to promote local manpower and the use of Nigerian-made materials in the oil and gas sector, said he would meet with President Bola Tinubu’s energy adviser to discuss the planned roadshow, for which a timeline had yet to be set.
“We intend to have roadshows in the country of origin of those companies to encourage those that have left our shores to come back,” Ogbe said at an oil and gas conference in the country’s federal capital Abuja, without elaborating how Nigeria planned to convince them to reconsider.
Shell said in March it would divest from Nigeria’s troubled onshore oil sector, joining Exxon, Italy’s Eni, Norway’s Equinor and China’s Addax which have struck deals to sell assets in the country in recent years.
Oil firms have long complained about insecurity in the Niger Delta, pipeline vandalism and crude theft as well as recent oil legislation which overhauled fiscal terms in the sector.
(Writing by Chijioke Ohuocha; Editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise)