Aiteo denies sale of Nembe Creek Trunk Line

 

Contrary to media reports that troubled Aiteo is going to sell Nembe Creek Trunk Line, Sola Omole, spokesman of the company, says the company is not planning to sell the asset.

“There is no such plans at all,” he said, “I can confirm to you that we have no such plans at this time,” Omole told BusinessDay.

A report by African Energy Intelligence notes that the company is currently in a precarious position both financially and with regards to the law and that Benedict Peters, its managing director, is seeking to sell the company’s assets piece by piece.

Nembe Creek Trunk Line (NCTL) is a 97-kilometre, 150,000 barrels of oil per day pipeline constructed by Royal Dutch Shell plc and situated in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria.

It is one of Nigeria’s major oil transportation arteries that evacuate crude from the Niger Delta to the Atlantic coast for export. It is owned by Aiteo Group, which recently purchased it as part of the related facilities of the oil bloc OML29 from Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC).

OML 29 potentially holds up to 2.2 billion barrels of oil and about 300 million standard cubic feet of gas.

The company and its managing director have been having a run-in with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) for his alleged role in $115 million bribe given to officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) by Diezani Alison-Madueke, former minister of petroleum resources, during the build-up to the 2015 election.

EFCC declared Benedict Peters wanted in August for criminal conspiracy, diversion of funds and money laundering, charges he denied in a newspaper advertorial.

Peters was also alleged to have taken part in the controversial crude oil swap deal involving the exchange of crude oil for refined petroleum products in which the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation gave out 445,000 barrels of crude per day to nine companies through the Pipelines Product Marketing Company, a subsidiary of the NNPC.