Eni has finished walking off the Niger Delta's dry land. The Italian major said on Monday it had completed the sale of Agip Energy and Natural Resources (Nigeria) Limited, known as AENR, to Apex Global Energy, a company wholly owned by onshore operator Sterling Oil Exploration and Energy Production Company.
What Apex gets is a 5% interest in the Renaissance joint venture, the group formerly known as the Shell Petroleum Development Company JV. Renaissance operates it with 30%, TotalEnergies holds 10% and NNPC 55%.
Eni didn't disclose a price, and it didn't give AENR's production. It said the deal had cleared all the approvals it needed.
A long goodbye
This sale is the last piece of a retreat that started 3 years ago. In September 2023, Eni agreed to sell Nigerian Agip Oil Company to Oando: 4 onshore blocks (OML 60 to 63), the Okpai power plants with 960MW of nameplate capacity, and 2 exploration licences. The 5% slice of the Shell JV was kept outside that deal, which is why it's only changing hands now.
By May this year, Eni was telling shareholders the 5% stake was up for sale, with the buyer facing due diligence that included reputational checks. Sterling's camp was already being tipped as the frontrunner.
What Eni keeps in Nigeria is offshore: deep water exploration and development, plus its share of Nigeria LNG. Eni called the onshore stake non-strategic, which tells you where it thinks the money is.
Who wins here
For Sterling, a 5% minority stake in a big operated JV is a very different animal from running its own blocks. It doesn't control spending or the pipelines, but it does get a share of production from the old Shell JV's onshore fields, at a price neither side wants public.
For oil service firms in Port Harcourt and Warri, it's another onshore stake moving to a Nigerian owner, with TotalEnergies' 10% the foreign holding left in the old Shell JV.
Output will decide it. If Renaissance lifts production, a quiet 5% could prove a smart buy for Sterling; if shut-ins pile up, Apex has paid for a share of the headaches too.
Figures are as reported at the time of writing. STATART news is written by Frank Brother (Markets), Christina Amgbari (Insights) and Ebipadei Joseph (Lifestyle), and checked before publication.