Nigeria, which till recently was insisting on ONGC and steel billionaire Lakshmi Mittal combine to fullfilling its $6-billion commitment of investing in the African nation's infrastructure, today indicated that it will not press any deadline as it was "happy" with their work.
"We are very happy with their work," said Emmanuel O Egbogah, Special Adviser to the Nigerian President, said on the sidelines of Petrotech 2010 conference here.
ONGC Mittal Energy, the joint venture company floated by state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corp and Mittal Investment Sarl, had promised to invest $6 billion in building either a 1,80,000 barrel per day refinery, a 2,000 Mw power plant or a railway line connecting eastern and western Nigeria in return of getting two deepsea exploration blocks.
Egbogah had at Petrotech-2009 in January last year stated the ONGC-Mittal will have to fulfil their commitment they made as part of the deal of the November 2006.
"I am not saying that they will be exempt but there is no deadline," he said today.
"Like I said, they have done good work (in exploring for oil and gas in the two deep-sea blocks awarded to them) and we are very happy.
"He had last year criticised OMEL for not doing anything on ground to fulfil the infrastructure commitment.
"They had signed an agreement committing those investments but nothing has happened so far," he had said them.
ONGC Mittal Energy (OMEL) is yet to get off the ground on those investment.
OMEL had in 2005 won rights to explore in OPL-279 and OPL-285 after committing pump in $6 billion in the core sector of Nigeria. It paid a signature bonus of $50 million for OPL-285 and $75 million for OPL-279.
With investments not flowing, the Nigerian Parliament ordered an inquiry to probe alleged irregularities in the allotment.
Egbogah also expressed ignorance about the inquiry today.
OMEL had in November 2006 paid $100 million to win the OPL-246 block. The Nigerian Government had vested the block from local company South Atlantic Petroleum (Sapetro) before allocating it to OMEL.
An ad-hoc committee of the House of Representatives had been formed to investigate into the alleged irregularities in allotment of oil blocks between 2006 and 2008. This, after original applications for OPL 216 and 246 could not be traced in the files.
It also reportedly discovered that OPL-246 was awarded to OMEL after the bid round for 2006 had been closed. The committee noted from the records that OPL-246 was awarded to an oil company (Sapetro) before DPR gave it out to OMEL.
OPL 246 is the relinquished area of the billion-barrel Akpo oilfield of South Atlantic Petroleum (Sapetro), which is part-owned by Theophilus Danjuma, former defence minister of Nigeria.
In January 2006, ONGC had lost out on acquiring Sapetros 45 per cent stake in Akpo to China's CNOOC after the Indian government disallowed the state-owned firm from proceeding on the transaction, where it was the highest bidder.
The Cabinet barred ONGC from proceeding on the bid, as it felt placing a huge sum of money in hands to Danjuma was a risky proposition.
