Chad Nationalises Exxon Mobil Assets after Sales Disagreement

Emmanuel Addeh in Abuja

Chad has nationalised all the assets and rights including hydrocarbon permits and exploration and production authorisations that belonged to a subsidiary of Exxon Mobil, the Central African nation’s energy and hydrocarbons ministry said in a statement.

Exxon Mobil said in December that it had closed the sale of its operations in Chad and Cameroon to London-listed Savannah Energy in a $407 million deal, but the Chadian government contested the agreement, saying the final terms were different from what Exxon Mobil had presented.

It warned that it may ask the courts to block Savannah’s purchase of Exxon’s assets in the country and take further steps to protect its interests, Reuters reported.

Exxon’s assets included a 40 per cent stake in Chad’s Doba oil project, which comprises seven producing oilfields with combined output of 28,000 barrels per day (bpd).

It also included Exxon’s interest in the more than 1,000 kilometre (621 mile) Chad/Cameroon pipeline from the landlocked nation to the Atlantic Gulf of Guinea coast through which its crude is exported.

″The finance and budget minister must make sure the said decree is implemented from the date of its publishing,” said the Government’s General Secretary, Haliki Choua Mahamat,  on state media and quoted by AP