miiraaj:

Your big vacuum head!

You are realy a lost soul who can't see the truth. So Sad

Gayigaskia:
You want to divide the country be ready to fight for it be ready to sacrfice cause it aint coming for cheap.

Jarus:

He did not only name names, he analyses the production and activity. Read well.

Akinosho is an encyclopedia of O&G in Nigeria.

4kmukina:




Ewu nama! and where in the article did Ojukwu tell igbos to vote IBB? GEJ got 100% from SE bc of Ojukwu and ohaneze, cud he be contradicting himself? U expect him to chase away the delegate that paid him homage?, yes he said IBB deserve a second chance just like OBJ got a second and third chance but that does not mean Ndigbo will vote IBB? D reply ojukwu gave to IBB delegates is analogous to the "Gud morning" greeting to saro wiwa in d afternoon. U lack comprehension skill. Nkita lachkwa gi anya na abo.

Former Biafran warlord, Dim Chukwuemeku Odumegwu-Ojukwu has
pledged support of Igbo people for the presidential aspiration of former military president, General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida and gave him the name Okechukwu.

The Ikemba of Nnewi gave this pledge when a group of IBB
campaigners under the aegis of Campaign Network for IBB 2011, South East Zone, paid him a courtesy visit at the weekend.
'Tell yourself principal that Igbos are for him. He has my support and by
extension he has the support of the whole Igbo people both at home
and in the Diaspora. He is my friend and I am stoutly behind him,'
Ojukwu said.

He used the occasion to rechristen Babangida as Okechukwu. 'He isnow Ibrahim Badamasi Okechukwu Babangida. That is his new name. I wish him success.' Earlier, the leader of the group, Chief Tony EmekaAni, said the group had come to solicit the support of Ojukwu for the presidential aspiration of IBB, adding that the group had just been inaugurated in the South East.

karpentar:

I think you're the one that refused to understand a simple article. He clearly stated that almost all northern owned oil fields are not producing: e.g.
Cavendish Petroleum - not producing Obe field.
Indimi's Oriental Resources - not producing from owned OML 115 and Okwok field.
Dantata's Express Petroleum - not producing Ukpokiti field
North East Petroleum not producing.
I ask again, whose fault? or does it change the fact that the ownership lies with northerners?

Read and Think, it's easy!!!!

thelastPope:

Nothing new there from you and your kind! You have always been traitors and backstabbers. You did it in 1967 and have been doing it ever since. You will always stoop to kiss the feet of your slave masters. That is your way. The way of the feeble hearted! The way of betrayal! We have liberated ourselves. No amount of propaganda will change that. What Enang said has been common info in the ND for years. So continue spewing your trash there.

Deep Sight:

Can you show me anything in the article that refutes or disproves Senator Enang's claim?

lacasa: THE NORTH DOES NOT CONTROL NIGERIA'S OIL BLOCKS, By Toyin Akinosho

Senator Ita Enang’s spirited claim at the National Assembly Wednesday to the effect that 83% of the country’s oil block is in the hands of northerners appears to be inspired from assertions contained in an old article by a newspaper commentator, Mr. Ross Alabo-George whose famous essay was titled Poverty And Deprivation: Why The North Is Poor.

In the excerpted refutation below, Toyin Akinosho, a petroleum geologist with over two decades of work at Chevron and now publisher of the well-regarded Africa Oil and Gas Report, argues angrily that such lines of thought canvassed by the likes of Senator Ita Solomon Enang and indeed Mr. Ross Alabo-George are merely hysterical, and tendentious, designed to mislead the public. Mr. Akinosho characterizes the arguments as crappy and crummy. It is excerpted from the African Oil+Gas Report for the value it brings to the current debate about Nigerians oil resources and the National Question.

Alabo-George’s article plays up so well the sentiments that a good number of Nigerians, especially middle class types excluded from the spoils of the petroleum subsidy, and allied deliverables, nurse about the kind of leadership we have suffered since independence.

But it has gone around so far and keeps being forwarded so rampantly, largely because it plays to the ethnic schism; the suspicions that each of us harbours, in our different silos, about “the other”.

It’s largely a response to the disingenuous claim by Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, the Central Bank Governor, that the Boko Haram insurgency is a response to the 13% derivation allocated to the oil producing states from the federation account. “There is clearly a direct link between the very uneven nature of distribution of resources and the rising level of violence”, Sanusi told The Financial Times of London.

Alabo-George’s piece is compelling when he contrasts what non oil-producing Southern states have been able to do with their supposedly meager allowances with what their Northern counterparts have done with their own allocations.

“Ekiti State has about the same revenue as Yobe and Gombe”, he contends, “but only 17 students passed WAEC and NECO in Gombe state last year, while Ekiti State is known for its high literacy level”.

I find two beautiful quotable quotes in the article: (1) “Borno State has a bigger budget than that of Cross River, a Niger Delta State. While the leaders of Cross River over the last decade have transformed it into the nation’s leading tourist destination, those of Borno have transformed it into a Somalia”.

(2) “Gombe State has a bigger budget than Enugu and Anambra, why has MASSOB not bombed anyone”?

But once Alabo- George ventures beyond the political economic analysis and starts to list who owns what oil and gas assets, his article is a litany of inaccuracies and lies. He gets it totally wrong.

He writes about the estate of the late Mai Deribe, the Bornu State born businessman, supposedly owning a huge oil field; Rilwanu Lukman having controlling shares in Afren; Atiku Abubakar being the stupendously rich beneficiary of the profits of Intels, the logistics company; Aminu Dantata’s Express Petroleum. He ties Amni Petroleum to only Sani Bello.

So much conspiracy theory.

Oil acreage ownership in Nigeria does not have ethnic colouration. What’s more important, sustaining production from oil and gas assets, whether or not awarded by the state, is determined by how much of a businessman you are.

When Jibril Aminu handed out oil prospecting blocks, in the first comprehensive effort “to encourage indigenous participation” in 1991, he gave blocks to companies owned by Folawiyo, Abiola, Adenuga, Udoji, Ibru, Igbinedion,(all Southerners) as much as he gave to enterprises set up by people like Saleh Jumbo and Mai Deribe.

Between 1991 and 1993, we suddenly had over 25 companies, that were Nigerian E&P companies and they took themselves so seriously that they set up an association they christened “Nigerian Association of Indigenous Petroleum Exploration Companies”. But what did these people do with the acreages? They were mostly clueless about how to progress things.

Out of that class of awardees, only Mike Adenuga created what you could really call an E&P company. He is the only one producing oil today, from his own block.

It’s bad enough that Nigerian indigenous private acreage holders don’t produce, as a collective, up to 150,000 Barrels per day, or 7% of the national daily production, so why are we fighting ourselves?

And I am less keen on how much you’re getting as rent from the asset you are holding, than the capacity you are building as manager of a Nigerian oil company who is awarded the asset, in trust for the rest of us.

I am for an ongoing, earnest debate on the National Question. But false information misleads all of us into false conclusions, which reduce the complexity of the solutions we ought to be proffering.

The author cites a number of hydrocarbon acreages belonging to Northern elites, but ignores the fact that holding an acreage is one thing; getting value out of it is another.

That so many people believe the poorly researched article, and so instantly forward it that it becomes one of the most travelled essays on the National Question, is testimony to poor knowledge of how the oil industry works.

The first field the author mentions is Obe field, which, he rightly claims, is held by Cavendish Petroleum, a company set up by Alhaji Mai Deribe. Alabo- George lied by saying that the Obe field, the main hydrocarbon pool in OML 110, contains 500Million barrels of oil reserves.

The Obe field does not have a proven 20 Million barrels. I am not sure it has 10Million barrels. It is not producing as I write. The Obe field has not produced for five years, since 2007, when Tranfigura, the last technical partner engaged by Cavendish, walked out.

I don’t know what discipline Mr Alabo-George belongs to, but this point I am about to make is well known to every junior petroleum geologist with three year experience in the crummiest E&P company: If a field holds 500Million barrels of oil, proven, in shallow water Nigeria, it won’t lie fallow. Investors would rush it.

In countries where you don’t have the complications that the NNPC brings to the table here, fields that haven’t proven much more than 500Million barrels are “rushed” through to development.

Ghana’s Jubilee field didn’t prove a billion barrels before the country’s authorities approved a field development plan. Apart from Nigeria, Angola, Libya, Algeria, Ghana (now, since 2008) and perhaps Equatorial Guinea, no African country has a billion barrels in proven reserves. 500 Million barrels is half of that.

Mr Alabo-George says that Obe has the capacity to produce about 120,000 barrels of crude oil daily from its OBE 4 and OBE 5 wells. What sort of numeracy is this? Or is he dreaming these figures? How can a field with less than twenty million barrels “have the capacity” to produce 120,000 barrels per day?. What’s capacity?

Alabo George’s second example of a wealthy northerner swimming in oil money is Mohammed Indimi, “a Fulani and close friend of General Ibrahim Babangida”. He says “Oriental Energy Resources Limited runs three oil blocks: OML 115, the Okwok field and the Ebok field. OML 115 and Okwok are OML PSC, while Ebok is an OML JV. All of them good yielding offshore oil blocks”.

The author just doesn’t care to verify his claims. True, Indimi’s Oriental Resources holds the three assets. OML 115 is not producing as I write. No one has certified that there’s a producible field in the acreage. Ebok is being produced, on Oriental Resources’ behalf, by Afren, a UK listed company. Last year, the field delivered an average of 8,000Barrels of Oil per Day(BOPD), according to Afren’s website. You can google it. Okwok, as I write, is still in development. Translation: it has produced nary a drop of oil.

Aminu Dantata’s Express Petroleum holds the Oil Mining Lease 108, with technical partners Shebah Petroleum, which bought out Conoco, the original technical partners. Fine.

The Ukpokiti field, the main asset on the acreage, produced for quite a while; and should have made the Dantatas quite rich, over a period of more than seven years. The field died out at some point and is being revived as I write.

“NorthEast Petroleum is owned by another Fulani businessman from the North East, Alhaji Saleh Mohammed Jambo”, Alabo-George testifies. “The license was awarded to him by General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida”.

Another truth: North East Petroleum has NEVER produced a single drop of oil since that award in the early 90s. There, simply, hasn’t been a discovery worth the while for operator TOTAL.

I agree that Theophilus Danjuma, also a Northerner, is entitled to contest for the award of the man who made the most fortune, at a sitting, on an oil acreage in Nigeria.

Alabo-George’s article, in his rush to conclusions, even understates the significance, by claiming that Danjuma’s company, South Atlantic Petroleum Limited(SAPETRO ), made $1Billion from the deal.

The truth is that China National Overseas Offshore Company(CNOOC ), signed a definitive agreement with SAPETRO to acquire a 45% working interest in OML 130 for $2.268 billion cash.

I don’t know how much the broker of the deal took, but I am yet to confirm if the Nigerian government earned any withholding tax from that transaction. In spite of what he has earned “upfront”, Danjuma’s SAPETRO gets 25,600Barrels of Oil per day for its 15% of OML 130 from the Akpo field, which is delivering 175,000BOPD.

But if you complain about Northerner Danjuma, what about the Alakijas, a Yoruba couple whose company, Famfa Oil, is “entitled”, every day, to 25,000BOPD from Chevron operated Agbami Field, located in deepwater OML 127?.

These two companies are two of the four largest producing Nigerian companies today. The other two are Adenuga’s Conoil(25,000BO PD) and Seplat Petroleum(37,00 0BOPD, operated, 16,000BOPD, equity).

Only one of those four companies is Northern owned. And it is outright falsehood that “ 80 per cent of crude oil and gas produced by indigenous companies is controlled by the North-East”.

But, as I said again: which technical and managerial capacity are we building on the back of the rent collected from these leases. It’s the real job.

The last example I’d touch, before the concluding commentary, for space purposes, is the case of Rilwan Lukman, who Alabo-Gorge cites as having controlling shares in Afren, the UK listed company. Lukman was there on the ground floor of the construction of Afren, around 2004, no doubt, but the key founders of Afren are Ethelbert Cooper, the Liberian businessman and Osman Shahenshah, who is the current Chief Executive.

What people like Lukman and Egbert Imomoh, the other Nigerian on the company’s board in the founding days, did, is the kind of thing I urge Nigerians in their positions to do.

Use your knowledge to access and create value, not to grab and destroy value. Cooper and Shanenshah knew that Lukman(then out of office both from OPEC and as Nigerian special adviser), and Imomoh(then recently retired as Deputy Managing Director Of Shell Nigeria) knew the Nigerian oil industry deeply and could access oil and gas fields that were lying fallow.

Shanenshah, coming from a financial services background, knew how to raise funds: the most important thing in oilfield exploration and development. Indeed the first piece of news by which most people knew of the existence of Afren was that the IMF had agreed to give a 5Million dollar loan to this company, which was only just about starting. It pays to have Lukman on your board.

Yet, in spite of Lukman’s influence in the Nigerian polity, Afren had never accessed Nigerian acreages via government awards. Afren, cash in hand, running a technically proficient company, approaches Nigerian indigenous owners of assets-like Ndimi’s Oriental Resources, Amni and several marginal field holders, and signs agreements with them to be technical partners.

After Afren has recovered its investment via cost oil, Afren and the company continue to share the proceeds from the field 50:50 for the life of the field. Afren uses Nigerian technical capacity to a large degree and it trains a lot of people. But it can do more.

Afren has never benefitted from bid round or government-sanc tioned discretionary awards, so why would anyone link Lukman’s involvement in Afren in a list that has a number of Northerners supposedly benefitting from government largesse? That is part of the trouble I have with Alabo-George’s essay.

I wouldn’t compare Lukman’s relationship with Afren to the benefits that Atiku Abubakar derives from being a part owner of Intels, the logistics company which takes advantage of the free trade zone in Onne, near Port Harcourt.

This particular example helps us to locate “the Nigerian tendency”, beyond “the Northern tendency”, in this discussion. Because, really, we are just all the same.

A foreign company comes to Nigeria to set up for business. Because of the difficulties we invent as barriers to entry, this company requires the services of some big Nigerian men, preferably those who have worked for government, for access.

What Atiku Abubakar has done with Intels has parallels in other sectors of the economy and is comparable with what Yoruba chieftains, Ijaw leaders, Igbo High Chiefs, Idoma overlords, etc, etc, have done with many other companies operating here.

That’s how people became key shareholders of companies like Julius Berger. As I write, the key sentiment underlining the complaints against the tolling on the Lekki Expressway is that “most of the money will go to Tinubu’s pocket”. That’s the word on the street.

Brokerage is not a bad thing on its own, but what we need to stress is a level playing field, rule of law, security of tenor and equity and fairness as much as possible, for all.

If I really want to be mischievous, I’d focus on the recent deal in which Shell and Agip have had to pay in excess of one billion dollars to Dan Etete, a south-south man, for stakes in Oil Prospecting Lease OPL 245. And I would ask “Is that necessarily right”? Should the president, a south-south Ijaw man, have waded in to ask Shell and Agip to move the deal forward? But that’s a story for another day.

In my book, people from everywhere have taken advantage of the unstructured way we have dispensed with oil and gas acreages. Naming names about which Northerner got what size of the pie is less useful than a focus on how government is insisting on open and transparent bidding, but more importantly, on Nigerian technical know how and management.

You can’t hand over an acreage and walk away. You have to monitor what the holder is doing. How he is ensuring employment. If we can’t, with all the treasure, build five private E&P companies that have the internal competencies that Shell has and can go out and buy and operate assets the way that UBA and GTB and Ecobank venture into Ghana and The Gambia, then we have wasted all of the 56 years we have spent since the hoorah at Oloibiri.

Akinosho, a petroleum geologist, former news reporter, and one-time community newspaper editor, is now publisher of the well-regarded African Oil+Gas Report

http://premiumtimesng.com/opinion123588-the-north-does-not-control-nigerias-oil-blocks-by-toyin-akinosho.html

lacasa:

You've made half sense here.

That's the writer's case, then, watz d hullaballoo about??

The Ibori's Adenuga's Alakijas esp Etete r the real owners of the proceeds anϑ unregistered profits emanating from oil wells in Nigeria, anϑ they r all Southerners


The senator's claim lacks any weight, anϑ if the full list is to be published, it'ld stress my point the more

vizboy: These article was written to deceive us so that they the northerns will be cleared for all suspisions. Imagind just after that showdown of the north having 83% of nigeria oil block. They didnt bother to oppose the pib bill which has past second phase now, why did they not defend themselves if they know what the senator said was a lie but rather paid someone else to do it. Naija people self

thelastPope:

Honestly, I can't undersand it! We said, let us split, they scuttled it! Now we are complaining that our God given wealth is being plundered from under our beds, they are writing nonsense articles again! I don't know what their problem is! Must they continue to draw us back? Must they always be used as tools to truncate our collective liberation? They are on their own this time. No going back! We must stop the injustice!

Duru1:


Maybe you would have been enlightened if the Senator had said that the 17% of Nigerian crude oil blocks belonged to southerners. Did you expect the Senator to perform the simple arithmetic for you too? The hack writer did not even attempt to disprove the 83% claim by the Senator Enang.

lacasa:

You've made half sense here.

That's the writer's case, then, watz d hullaballoo about??

The Ibori's Adenuga's Alakijas esp Etete r the real owners of the proceeds anϑ unregistered profits emanating from oil wells in Nigeria, anϑ they r all Southerners


The senator's claim lacks any weight, anϑ if the full list is to be published, it'ld stress my point the more

backtosender: Why must reply always come from a S-west?

they are not benefiting anything from the north,

they are becoming a pain in the ass within southern nigeria

Pls S-west yorubas do you enjoy the way Northerners molest you,detain your politicians murder some in the process while some of your

elders will go behind and sell-out their own people,and collect bribes and create segregation within the same tribe..

What are you afraid of??

thelastPope: Hahahahahaha! You guys have been exposed! Give it up! It isn't really new to many of us. We have known for years. Even before 1999.

Imagine claiming that igbinedion and ibru own oil blocks. lol. Give it up guys. Paying a Yoruba guy to betray us southerners again won't work this time. He is on his own. We know the truth and that is why Saro Wiwa was killed. Saro Wiwa kept saying this till he was killed. That is why militancy started. It isn't news to us. It isn't only the oil blocks they have cornered. They cornered customs, army positions, PHCN and many others. People with little or no qualification were running major departments. Some with diploma in Islamic studies. If you ever worked in the ciil service, you will weep for Nigeria. The northern oligarchy ran Nigeria aground. Thanks to OBJ, he balanced the army. Thanks to GEJ now, he is normalizing the civil service. That is why you see them whining and attacking Deziani, the head of immigration, minister of aviation and the chief of army staff, accusing them of tribalism. lol. You guys will have to earn anymore respect from us. Simple!

Fifty-Fifty:
And this well researched article does‘t deserve to be on front page? If it‘s about Tonto, Omotola or Derele the moderators will undo one another in seeing that it reach to front page. Excruciating indeed.

lacasa:


​ so​ ur own arithmetic is based on the Senator's word right.


Let him publish the full list!.


He only picked names from a specific part of Nigeria, to push his devisive agenda.

#... Don't be a mugu!!!

thelastPope:

Yes oh! We are learning from your kind and learning very fast because our survival and collective progress depends on it. We have to learn fast and catch up with you people in the ministry of mago mago and jibiti! You know you guys have over 40 years experience of jibiti and wayo in your CVs! lol

Of course many of our people have benefitted from the threachery just like the Saro Wiwa story. You are very right there and we are working very hard to kick them out. That is why you can see we will not break our ranks again. We will not allow fake Niger Deltans to spoil our progress again. That is why you see Akpabio very resolute in his stand!

All your propaganda will only enter our right ear and vamoose through our left ear. We will not save it on our memory card again. We will take our destiny in our own hands this time around.

gratiaeo:
Can you back it up with a link??

thelastPope:

There is nothing that can tarnish the north's image more than almost 50 years of misrule, plunder and wanton destruction of Nigeria while chanting one Nigeriya! The north has done a good job of that. No one needs to do more.

Give it up. The only people that will believe such articles are the same traitors that betrayed us southerners in 1967, 1994 and 1998. They are trying to betray us again but we are far wiser now. Can't you see the SS and SE have made up their minds? Open your eyes. Now we have forged a strong alliance with the NC who have also been terribly marginalised and mess up both by the NE/NW and some of their own leaders. Nobody will buy your story anymore. You guys destroyed and plundered Nigeria and used divide and rule tactics to turn us against each other. It will never work again.

Why do you think nobody cared about the last subsidy protest in the SS and SE? Only your slaves will believe your crap again. We are fed up of it. We will get equity whether you like it or not.

initiator: I know the writer through his magazine and respect him quite well. However, having spent almost 2 years in an IOC I would spot some inaccuracies in his rebutal. He fails to mention that even Dangote owns about 20% stake in OPL 223 or Owowo as it would be called.
Seplat also has substantial ownership from the present Emir of Kano and one Orjiakor from the east.
Also all the names mentioned by the senator were correct and speak to ownership, not production dynamics. He as a geologist knows that a barren block today could start producing a lot in 5 years. The writer did not disprove the senator. He only tried to say no other tribe is better.