TOTALENERGIES PLANS TO BUILD $750 MILLION GAS PROJECT IN NIGERIA

French energy company TotalEnergies SE could approve a $750 million gas project in Nigeria next year, a possible sign that the African country’s efforts to revive hydrocarbon investment are making progress.

Earlier this year, the French company approved an investment of about $500 million in a joint venture with Nigerian National Petroleum Co. to develop the onshore Ubeta field. The 300 million cubic feet per day project will increase supplies to Nigeria’s liquefied natural gas plant.

“We have another dry gas project called Ima that we hope to approve next year for about $750 million,” Mike Sangster, senior vice president of Africa, exploration and production at TotalEnergies, told Business Insider Forum France-Nigeria in Paris on Friday. “The shallow-water project, jointly developed with a local partner, will further increase supplies to the LNG plant.”

Since taking power in May 2023, President Bola Tinubu has worked to address problems in the oil and gas sector, signing two executive orders this year aimed at improving efficiency. Nigeria hopes to attract up to $10 billion in new investment in deep-water gas exploration through tax incentives and other measures proposed in a new policy framework.

“We still have a lot to do in terms of regulation, simplification and speeding up the process, but we’ve welcomed some of the changes that have been made in the last year,” TotalEnergies’ Sangster said. They’ve “given us the impetus or motivation to renew our investments in Nigeria so that we can stop the decline and start increasing production.”

He called for further easing of local content rules to encourage international contractors specializing in deepwater projects to return to Nigeria, which would in turn boost competition and unlock some investments that have been on hold.