Eni confirmed receipt of the letter and said in a statement that it is ready to consider, together with the government of Nigeria, the necessary steps for conversion of the prospective license to one that will allow the development of the oil block.
Nigeria’s Ministry of Justice wasn’t immediately able to respond to a request for comment, the report said.
Operations at the Nigerian oil block have been halted for more than a decade by a series of trials and competing legal claims. The area is considered to be potentially one of the richest concessions in the country, with recoverable reserves of 560 million barrels, according to Eni’s estimates.
Whether Eni and its partner Shell Plc could finally begin to develop OPL 245 may depend on the resolution of other claims, including arbitration proceedings filed by Eni at the World Bank’s International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes and litigation within Nigeria.
Eni, Shell and some of their former and current managers had already been definitively acquitted last year in a criminal case in Milan, in which they were accused of knowing that much of the $1.1 billion they paid to acquire OPL 245 would be distributed as bribes.
Even after that verdict a civil suit continued, with Nigeria seeking combined compensation of $3.5 billion from Eni and Shell, claiming the amount reflected the real value of the license purchased in 2011 by the two companies.
A timeline of events in the asset showed that Nigerian government awarded OPL 245 for $20 million to Malabu Oil and Gas. Court documents later showed that Malabu was owned by Dan Etete, who was oil minister at the time, and people close to former military ruler Sani Abacha.
In May 1999, Etete, on behalf of Malabu, paid $2.04 million for the OPL 245 licence out of the $20 million the company ha
