Uche Cecil Izuora
U.S. oil and gas giant Chevron, says it is buying into offshore blocks offshore Nigeria looking to revive exploration in what it describes as an under-explored oil province.
The oil major is also looking for similar opportunities in Angola, Nigeria’s closest rivalry.
The two top West Africa’s major producers have seen their oil output slump in recent years, due to underinvestment and majors selling off assets in these countries.
Chevron, however, insists that the offshore waters still have a lot of resources which it could tap and develop.
The region of West Africa is “such a hydrocarbon-rich part of the world and relatively under-explored compared to other jurisdictions,” Liz Schwarze, Chevron Global Exploration Vice President, told Bloomberg on Tuesday.
Chevron has already added exploration blocks in Nigeria, Angola, and Equatorial Guinea.
Last month, the supermajor’s Nigerian unit announced a near-field oil discovery in Petroleum Mining Lease (PML) 49 in the shallow offshore region of the Western Niger Delta.
At the same time, companies including Eni, Equinor, and ExxonMobil have recently sold some assets in Nigeria, after receiving regulatory approvals.
Just last month, Nigeria gave the green light to Exxon to sell its onshore assets to Seplat Energy, after more than two years of regulatory reviews and scrutiny.
Chevron is not only not selling, it is adding acreage in Nigeria and Angola.
This summer, Chevron signed contracts for two ultra-deep blocks offshore Angola.
The other majors have focused further south along the West African coast, looking to tap the vast discovered resources offshore Namibia, one of the latest exploration hotspots.
Shell and TotalEnergies have already made large discoveries offshore Namibia, kicking off the Namibian oil rush in 2022.
Over the past two years, Shell has made several oil and gas discoveries in the Orange Basin offshore Namibia.
The basin extends to South African waters to the south and the majors are now looking to tap into these areas hoping to find huge resources similar to the ones in the Namibian portion of the Orange Basin