Global oil companies, Shell Integrated Gas Thailand Pte Ltd and Thai Energy Company Ltd, affiliates of Royal Dutch Shell Plc, have agreed to an asset sale of their 22.2222% interest in the Bongkot field and adjoining acreage offshore Thailand to PTT Exploration & Production Public

Company Limited (PTTEP) and PTTEP International Limited, a wholly-owned subsidiary of PTTEP, for a transaction value of $750 million. The transaction is expected to complete in the second quarter of 2018, subject to completion conditions as prescribed in the agreement.

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on Monday injected the sum of $55m into the economy for Nigerians requiring foreign exchange (Forex) for Business/Personal Travel Allowances, tuition, and medical fees. The amount is part of $210m pumped into various segments of the foreign exchange market by the apex bank.

Photo: Guardian Nigeria

The Nigerian Senate on Tuesday summoned the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Godwin Emefieli, Managing Directors of Banks and Bankers Committee among others over increasing cases of illegal deductions by Deposit Money Banks. The issue was brought to the floor of the senate by Senator Magnus Abe in a motion titled “Urgent need to investigate, regularise and amend conflicting, vague and unjust remedies which the Central Bank of Nigeria offers to victims of excess and arbitrary bank charges and illegal deductions by commercial banks.”

The Senate Committee on Petroleum (downstream) is set to commence investigation into the petroleum subsidy scheme with a warning that any government officials found to have been involved in petroleum subsidy racketeering would be duly punished.

Committee Chairman, Senator Kabir Marafa stated this while addressing executives of agencies of government who were being questioned over their roles in petroleum subsidy from 2006 till date.

Marafa said, the claims by the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) that 70 million litres of PMS were being consumed daily by Nigerians might not be true; hence, the move to investigate activities of the sector.

A State High Court sitting in Ikeja, Lagos, has convicted and sentenced two oil marketers - George Ogbonna and Emmanuel Morah, owners of Rocky Energy Limited to eight years imprisonment on a 26-count amended charge bordering on conspiracy, obtaining by false pretence and forgery to the tune of N789.6million.

The convicts were prosecuted alongside one Adamu Maula, owner of Downstream Energy Sources Limited, by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC.

They were said to have imported 10, 862 metric tonnes of Premium Motor Spirit, PMS, for which they were paid the sum of money by the Petroleum Support Fund, PSF.

U.S. energy companies added 12 oil rigs this week, the biggest weekly increase since March, as crude prices hovered near their highest levels since 2014, prompting drillers to return to the well pad. Drillers boosted the oil rig count to 759 in the week to Jan. 26, the highest level since September, General Electric Co’s Baker Hughes energy services firm said in its closely followed report on Friday.

Nigeria plans to start building a $5.8 billion hydro-power plant in the eastern Mambila region this year, after it agrees on loan terms with China’s Export-Import Bank. “We hope to break ground this year if we can conclude the financing. Contracts are in place. We are good to go,” Power, Works and Housing Minister Babatunde Fashola said in a Jan. 23 interview in the capital, Abuja.

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has reportedly removed 36 sub-items from the list of items banned from accessing forex from its window since 2015. President of the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN), Frank Udemba-Jacobs, said this in a chat with journalists in Lagos.

Kano State Government in Nigeria has handed over 150 hectares of land to Dangote Group for the development of a US $150m Dangote/Black Rhino solar power plant in Zakirai, Gabasawa local government area. Managing Director, Stakeholder Management Dangote Group, Alhaji Bello Danmusa received the land on behalf of Aliko Dangote.

The Nigerian Senate has said it will amend the Nigeria Oil and Gas Industry Content Development, NOGICD Act, 2010, noting that the existing law was not achieving the aims for which it was enacted. The Senate took the decision to amend the Act after the Ad-HOC Committee currently investigating the local content and cost variation of the $16 billion Egina Deep Sea oil project, made its observation known.