Addax Petroleum Exits Nigeria, Transfers Assets To NNPC

The Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited on Tuesday announced it has signed a settlement and exit agreement with Sinopec’s Addax Petroleum Development (Nigeria) to exit its four major oil mining blocks in the country.

With this agreement, according to NNPC Limited, Addax has ceased to be the Production Sharing Contract (PSC) contractor for the Oil Mining Leases (OML) 123/124 and OMLs 126/137.

The NNPCL Chief Finance Officer, Umar Ajiya, signed the agreement on behalf of the company, while the Managing Director of Addax Petroleum, Yonghong Chen, signed on behalf of his company. The signing of the agreement took place at the NNPC headquarters office in Abuja.

“Earlier today, NNPC Limited and Addax Petroleum Development (Nigeria) Ltd signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on the Transfer, Settlement and Exit Agreement (TSEA) for Oil Mining Leases (OML) 123/124 and OMLs 126/137,” the state oil firm said on its official Twitter page on Tuesday.

The PSC for the blocks was initially signed in 1973 between NNPC and Ashland and was terminated after 25 years.

Addax took over ownership of the four OMLs after the NNPC terminated its contract with Ashland in 1998.

Again, in 1998, the NNPC signed another PSC with Addax on the blocks and operated through Addax Petroleum for another 24 years.

In April 2021, Nigeria’s oil regulator revoked the four oil mining licenses, citing the company’s inability to comply with targets, but the decision was restored by President Muhammadu Buhari three weeks later.