A subsidiary of MRS Holdings Ltd provided
the NNPC $300 million to buy two shallow-water licenses divested by Chevron,
the news medium said, quoting the state-owned company’s most recent financial
statements.
The transaction was completed in May and
the financing is secured against crude from producing fields within NNPC’s
portfolio, it said.
According to Bloomberg, the forward sale
agreement was concluded between NNPC and Bahamas-registered Bestaf Funding Ltd,
according to the financial statements and an emailed response from NNPC Chief
Financial Officer Umar Ajiya.
Bestaf, it said, is a group of companies
that is part of MRS, a Lagos-headquartered conglomerate belonging to the family
of Sayyu Dantata, the 53-year-old younger half-brother of Africa’s richest
person, Aliko Dangote.
MRS is active in the storage, retailing and
distribution of petroleum products, and one of its subsidiaries is among the
firms with which the NNPC swaps crude for imported gasoline to meet Nigeria’s
needs of the fuel.
According to the report, Bestaf companies
develop real estate, manufacture lubricants, store shipping containers and
provide support vessels. MRS and Bestaf didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Recently transformed into a fully
commercial venture, the NNPC, it stated , is looking to grow its presence
throughout Nigeria’s energy sector.
The company purchased Chevron’s 40 per cent
operating stakes in the licenses — Oil Mining Leases (OMLs) 86 and 88 — after
pre-empting negotiations between the US major and local firm Conoil Producing
Ltd. The NNPC is also trying to buy four blocks that Seplat Energy Plc agreed
in February to acquire from Exxon Mobil Corp. for $1.3 billion.
Ajiya, it added, declined to comment on
whether the financing model used to take over Chevron’s permits could be
emulated to purchase Exxon’s assets, saying such a disclosure “would amount to
intrusion into our business strategy.”
The NNPC will repay Bestaf over 4.5 years
and is expected to deliver 8,000 barrels of crude per day to Dantata’s company
throughout the duration of the contract between the parties, according to the
financial statements.
The oil is the “sole repayment guarantee”
and will be lifted by an MRS unit operating as Bestaf’s trading agent,
according to Ajiya. The proceeds shall be deposited into a designated account
held at the African Export–Import Bank “for regular repayment,” he said.
Afreximbank loaned Bestaf the $300 million
to fund NNPC’s asset purchase, according to Ajiya. Afreximbank and a Bestaf
company signed a memorandum of understanding a year ago for $1 billion to
support the firm’s commercialisation of the gas deposits in OML 86 and 88 under
an agreement with the NNPC. Bloomberg added that Afreximbank didn’t respond to
a request for comment.
In July this year, a Director at Conoil
Plc, Dr. Ebi Omatsola, accused NNPC Limited and its Group Chief Executive
Officer, Mallam Mele Kyari, of doing “illegal stuffs” in the nation’s oil and
gas industry.
Speaking in Lagos, at the Nigerian
Association of Petroleum Explorationists’ (NAPE) divestments workshop ,
Omatsola accused the NNPC of denying Conoil Producing, the right to acquire
OMLs 86 and 88 from Chevron, after the company had emerged the preferred bidder
and had done all the due diligence.
“I was hoping he (Mele Kyari) would be
here, I would challenge him. He’s been doing illegal stuffs for the last four
years. You have no right like you have done for Seplat on ExxonMobil. You have
no right like they did for us on OML 86 and 88 of Chevron,” Omatsola had
insisted.
Although it has continued to double down on
acquiring lucrative oil and gas assets in recent times, the national oil
company has also received flaks from industry players who accuse it of
embarking on a “grabbing” spree even if it has not managed the assets under its
portfolio efficiently. BLOOMBERG