Dangote Group, controlled by
Africa’s richest man
Aliko Dangote, is considering the purchase of Nigerian
oil fields as international companies plan to sell onshore assets in the continent’s top crude producer.
The company, which has interests from cement to sugar, needs to secure a supply of crude oil and a “substantial amount of gas” for a $9 billion oil refinery and petrochemical complex it plans in southwest Nigeria, Group Executive Director Devakumar Edwin, 57, said in a Jan. 17 interview in Lagos, the country’s commercial capital. The company also needs energy for its cement plants in Africa’s second-largest economy, he said.
“We’re seriously thinking of investing in oil blocks both for gas and for oil,” Edwin said. “We’ve started talking with some companies who are divesting from onshore,” he said, declining to name them.
International oil and gas explorers including
Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSA) and
San Ramon, California-based
Chevron Corp. (CVX) are selling onshore and shallow-water fields in Nigeria amid persistent violence and crude theft in the oil-rich Niger River delta, with smaller Nigerian companies taking their place.