The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Taleveras

  • Taleveras complied with International Trading Standards, says legal team

    The Taleveras Group yesterday said all its business transactions and investments in the oil sector  have been in compliance with International Trading Standards.

    It also said that in the last 17 years, it has been trading and engaging in third party contracts, inclusive of oil and gas upstream operations.

    On the case made by the US Department of Justice, Taleveras said neither it nor its associated companies lifted any oil from the Atlantic Drilling Fluids.

    In a statement signed by its Legal Counsel, Alex School Esq,  the company which just won oil blocks in Equatorial Guinea, said the legal case against Atlantic Drilling Fluids has nothing to do with Taleveras or its chairman, Mr. Igho Sanomi.

    The company said the reports of some online online publications were not only misleading but grossly inaccurate.

    The statement said: “The attention of Taleveras legal team has been drawn to online publications related with a case against Atlantic Drilling Fluids. This legal case is not against Taleveras or Igho Sanomi.

    Some of these publications are misleading and grossly inaccurate. It is thus proper to set the records straight.

    “One of Taleveras core activities since 2000, is sourcing, trading and engaging in third party contracts, inclusive of oil and gas upstream operations.

    “Taleveras due to its capacity, trading expertise and financial strength, continues to source and engage in procuring third party oil contracts.

    “Taleveras performs on these contracts handling the physical delivery, risk management and logistics from start point to its numerous first class end users and major refiners.

    “This process involves verification of the contracts with the issuing authority to authenticate and further compliance with our lending banks internal due diligence processes. This is no different from International Trading Standards performed by the numerous international and major oil and gas companies operating in Nigeria.

    “As it relates to the US department case against Atlantic Drilling, please note that Taleveras and the other two major oil trading houses (Glencore and Arcadia) were not faulted for embarking on a legitimate transaction, as all payments were made based on legitimate third party contracts with private companies and not NNPC.

    “This is indeed compared to a buyer of a property who embarks on verification of property title documents with the issuing authority and upon verification, goes into a sales contract and then makes contractual payment to the seller. The Buyer certainly has no control in whatever the seller does with his proceeds from the sale.

    “In concluding, the ultimate aim of contracting is to off-take crude oil from asset productions.

    “ It is worthy to note that neither Taleveras nor its associated companies lifted any oil from this production through Atlantic. Terms of the agreement were breached and hence a legal dispute and appropriate filings made in respected court of jurisdiction.

    “We will thus refrain from making further comments.”

  • Taleveras, Exxon Mobil win Equatorial Guinea oil blocks

    Three major oil firms namely Exxon Mobil, Taleveras and Ophir on Monday won oil blocks in Equatorial Guinea.

    Equatorial Guinea’s Minister of Mines and Hydrocarbons, Gabriel Obiag-Lima, disclosed this at the African Oil and Gas Conference in Cape Town, South Africa.

    The winners were revealed by Obiag-Lima at a press conference.

    Exxon Mobil, in a statement confirmed it has signed its Production Sharing Contract with Equatorial Guinea for Oil acreage E.G.-11, thus heading the list of acreage winners in the Central African nation’s latest licensing bidding round.

    United Kingdom- based Ophir Energy won the block EG 24, while Taleveras picked the highly potential EG-07 oil block.

    Clonterf Energy landed Block EG-18.

    Equatorial Guinea is Africa’s seventh largest oil producer behind Nigeria, Angola, Algeria, Libya, Egypt and Sudan.

    Other countries in the top 10 are – Republic of Congo, Gabon and South Africa.

     

  • Crude swap: NNPC confirms settlement with Taleveras, others

    Crude swap: NNPC confirms settlement with Taleveras, others

    The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation(NNPC) yesterday said it has reached a settlement agreement with Taleveras Group of Companies and two other companies involved in the $184 million crude oil swap.

    The others are AITEO Energy Resource Limited and Ontario Oil.

    NNPC commended Taleveras and other companies involved in the crude swap for reconciling their accounts and agreeing on a settlement plan to bring this long standing matter to a closure.

    Taleveras has committed to an initial prompt settlement of $17 million payment and will further make further payments in $10million tranches.

    Ontario is yet to submit its repayment plan, whilst AITEO  has reconciled its own, leveraging on its global business position with NNPC.

    The Group Managing Director of the Corporation, Dr. Maikanti Baru, told journalists in Abuja that the settlement agreement was a product of the ongoing extensive reconciliation process with the companies involved.

    A statement on the outcome of the meeting by the Group General Manger, Public Affairs, Ndu Ughamadu, quoted Baru as saying:  ‘’We have engaged them and positively too. So far, AITEO has been very cooperative and we had extensive reconciliation across all our chains of businesses where they are involved. In the case of Televaras, they have agreed to make tranche payment of $10 million, while Ontario has also agreed to come to the table with our team and present their repayment schedule.”

    He also said Taleveras has already pledged to repay $17m and thanked the company for their cooperation so far.

    The GMD said the ongoing recovery process is geared towards ensuring probity and accountability in the operations of the corporation in line with current reforms in the industry.

    Baru emphasized the determination of the NNPC under his leadership to recover the outstanding stock of its missing petrol in Capital Oil depot, noting that MRS had complied.

    Only last week, the NNPC announced aggressive measures to achieve full recovery of over 130 million litres of petrol stored in the facilities of two indigenous downstream operators, MRS Limited and Capital Oil & Gas Limited, under a throughput arrangement to ensure a robust strategic reserve.

    Providing details of the infraction by the companies, Mr. Henry Ikem Obih, NNPC Chief Operating Officer, Downstream, explained that the violation was discovered earlier in the year when the corporation had need to access the over 100 million litres of petrol stored at the Capital Oil & Gas depot for NNPC Retail and just over 30 million litres in MRS Limited depot all in the Apapa area of Lagos.

    He said though MRS had fully complied by returning the 30 million litres of petrol it expropriated, the corporation was working assiduously to recover from Capital Oil & Gas the 82 million litres of petrol, valued at N11bn, out of over 100 million litres.

     

  • Taleveras: NEITI clarifies report on crude swap arrangement

    Taleveras: NEITI clarifies report on crude swap arrangement

    Contrary to a report in the March 25, 2014 edition of a Nigerian Daily Newspaper that 152,308,878 litres was listed against Taleveras in the Crude Oil Swap Arrangement, The Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) report lists 52,308,878.00 in USD value against the name of the company Subsequently, the NEITI has refuted an earlier report of $8 billion loss.

    NEITI’s Director of Communication, Dr. Orji Ogbonnaya Orji, while denying the $8 billion loss said.

    “The media report from that presentation attributed to NEITI that the nation loses $8 billion annually through crude oil swap. This is not only wrong but misleading. What NEITI presented and explained at that hearing was that there is no cost efficiency in the transactions with the offshore processing organisations.”

    Leonard Kwentua, a Senior Trading and Supply Executive of Taleveras Petroleum, went further to say.

    “Taleveras’ supply of gasoline under the swap arrangement is on- going activities and accounts are reconciled quarterly to determine what is oversupplied or under supplied. This barter arrangement is a major factor responsible for the sustainability of supply and availability of Gasoline across Nigeria.

    “International financial institutions are very sensitive to sensational media reports and most recently these inaccurate reports do more harm than good in structuring finance for petroleum product supply into Nigeria. Furthermore, It is on record that Taleveras is one of the most active supplier of refined petroleum products in and out of Africa as a whole and in particular PPMC under the Duke/Taleveras arrangement. We are often than not, used as a Performance Example. Secondly, for the swap transaction, there is an underlying security in form of a standby letter of credit in Favour of PPMC, so if you don’t deliver the products, PPMC is in a position to cash your letter of Credit. These letters of credits are issued in favour of PPMC by first class banks and must be bank confirmed prior to an Offtake of the crude. So in essence no letter of credit, no lifting of crude”

  • Taleveras, Lukoil sign pacts for oil acreage

    Taleveras, Lukoil sign pacts for oil acreage

    African Independent oil and gas company Taleveras has signed a Farm-Out Agreement with a subsidiary of LUKOIL, Russia’s largest private oil company, for Block CI-504 in Ivory Coast. PETROCI, the national oil company of Ivory Coast, according to a statement, also holds interest in the Block. Block CI-504 is located in close proximity to the producing Baobab field.

    The area of the block is 399 square kilometers, water depth ranges from 800 to 2100 meters. In the south CI-504 borders on block CI-205, which is already operated by LUKOIL.

    The committed work programme includes three periods, the first exploration period calls for the interpretation of historical 2D and 3D seismic data as well as additional 3D seismic acquisition by January 2014. Two other periods covering five years in total provide for the drilling of two exploration wells.

     Taleveras according to the statement, signed an MoU with PETROCI for collaboration in upstream activities in Ivory Coast in July 2011. Since then Taleveras has signed Production Sharing Contracts with PETROCI for three exploration blocks offshore Ivory Coast.

     Taleveras is a diversified energy and infrastructure conglomerate concentrating on oil & gas exploration, production, trading and supply, with further activities in power and construction. Active across the globe, Taleveras’ offices are located in London, Geneva, Abuja, Lagos, Abidjan, Cape Town and Dubai. The company is privately owned.

     LUKOIL is Russian major international vertically-integrated oil & Gas Company. PETROCI has been the national oil company of Ivory Coast since 1975.