14 December 2016, Abuja- Nigeria’s Department of Petroleum Resources admitted on Tuesday that no due diligence was carried out prior to the awarding of Oil Prospecting Licence 245 to Malabu Oil in 1998.
The oil bloc, considered the richest in Africa, is estimated to contain about 9 billion barrels of crude.
The licence was awarded during the regime of a former military dictator, Sani Abacha, under the supervision of then Minister of Petroleum, Dan Etete.
PREMIUM TIMES had reported how Mr. Etete, using a fictional character Kwekwu Amafegha, owned 30 per cent of Malabu at inception in violation of Nigerian laws. The other shareholders were Mohammed Sani, Mr. Abacha’s son (50 per cent) and Hassan Adamu, a former Nigerian Ambassador to the U.S. (20 per cent).
After years of controversy that saw OPL 245 changing hands between Malabu, the Nigerian government, and oil giant Shell, the Nigerian government received about $1.1 billion through an escrow account with JPMorgan from Shell and another oil major, ENI, for the bloc. The government then transferred majority of the funds to accounts controlled by Mr. Etete in a suspicious deal that has been a subject of sweeping investigations across four jurisdictions.
Mr. Tolorunse said his department only confirmed payments for the licence but didn’t participate in the process leading up to the selection of Malabu Oil as the recipient of a prospecting licence for the lucrative oil field.
Mr. Tolorunse said he was only able to confirm that Malabu Oil paid N50,000 as application fee to the government at the time. The firm also paid $10,000 for the processing of bilateral investment terms.
