The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation and contractor parties, comprising Joint Venture (JV) oil firms have signed five agreements on the Bonga Production Sharing Contract (PSC) to explore about two billion barrels of oil under the Oil Mining Lease (OML) 118.
At the pacts signing ceremony at the NNPC Towers in Abuja yesterday, the company on its social media, said, “This marks a watershed in the administration of deep-water operations in Nigeria. Over $10 billion of investment will be unlocked as a result of this development.”
With the pacts, the partners comprising Shell, Exxon Mobil, Total, SNEPCO and Agip, are termed as Bonga PSC partners and along with NNPC, they will be executing five agreements that will deliver about $700 million of immediate benefit to Nigeria.
The OML 118 partnership is the first of such development in the deep-water arrangement in the Nigerian oil sector.
Prospects show that the oil field has a gas deposit of about one trillion standard cubic feet (TCF), beside the 2bn oil exploration potential.
The process for the landmark agreements signing began in February 2019 when NNPC signed the Heads of Terms (HoT) with the OML 118 contractor parties.