Chevron gives up Nigerian oil exploration block
ABUJA, March 20 (Reuters) - U.S. oil major Chevron <CVX.N> and its partners in Nigerian deep-water oil exploration block 250 have agreed to relinquish the acreage after failing to find commercial quantities of oil, Chevron said on Monday.
Oil Prospecting Lease (OPL) 250 was hotly contested in a Nigerian exploration licensing round in 2000 as it was thought to be one of the more promising blocks on offer. Chevron and Royal Dutch Shell <RDSa.L> battled hard for control of the block before agreeing to be partners in the venture.
The firms' withdrawal from the block is a blow for Nigeria, which hopes to boost its 2.4 million barrels per day crude oil output thanks to deep-water production. Companies are also looking to offshore blocks as safer to operate than the onshore or shallow water oilfields in the volatile Niger Delta.
A quarter of Nigerian oil production is currently shut down because of a series of militant attacks on oil sector infrastructure in the Niger Delta.
"Chevron, along with its partners in OPL 250, have decided to relinquish their holdings in the block," the company said in a statement sent to Reuters on Monday.
"The unanimous decision follows the evaluation and interpretation of exploration data collected from the field, including results from drilled exploratory wells," it said.
Chevron and its partners Shell, Petrobras <PER.BA> and ConocoPhillips <COP.N> had signed a production sharing contract in 2001 for OPL 250 with state firm Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).
Chevron said NNPC had been notified of the partners' decision to relinquish the block.
The award of block 250 to Chevron as operator, in Dec. 2000, caused controversy at the time because Shell had bid $200 million for the block, compared with Chevron's $60 million.
Nigeria said the choice of Chevron was in line with policy considerations and the government's higher weighting of technical ability over financial value.
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