In Nigeria, Eni has played an important role in the development of oil resources. The Nigerian president, Mohammadu Buhari, said this yesterday during the press conference with the Italian premier, Matteo Renzi, who is visiting the African country.
“We mainly discussed companies like Eni, which has been present in Nigeria for over 40 years, and the role it has played in the research and development of our oil resources,” Buhari specified. Renzi, on the other hand, wrote on Facebook that Nigeria is a great country and asks “Europe and Italy for more attention, more support and more closeness. We are here with exactly this goal”.
In the first installment of a diary in which he will recount the salient moments of his official trip to Africa (last night he was in Accra, the capital of Ghana, from which he will continue on to Dakar, in Senegal), Renzi claimed to be "the first non-African premier to visit Buhari, the first Italian ever. I hope I'm not the last because Nigeria is decisive for the future of Africa. We have signed an agreement between the two police forces and set up a joint work on agriculture, small and medium-sized enterprises, international cooperation as well as on traditional energy issues".
Nigeria, underlines Renzi, is “a country rich in resources beyond belief. President Buhari is engaged in an all-out fight against corruption and terrorism. Visiting this land, you can't help but think of the girls kidnapped two years ago by Boko Haram, of the cry of pain that the world raised then, but which seems forgotten. You can't help but think of the continuous massacres, the last one yesterday, with witnesses who speak of a child being burned alive. And then you understand that this great country needs to be helped more”.
On 27 January, Eni announced that it had signed, together with Vitol and Ghana National Petroleum Corporation, an agreement to proceed with the OCTP project, which will allow the supply of local gas to Ghanaian thermal power plants for 15 years.
The extraction of the first gas is scheduled for 2018. "The OCTP gas fields will be able to continuously supply Ghana's thermoelectric generation system from 2018 to 2036," said Eni.
OCTP is an integrated offshore project about 60 km off the coast of Ghana for the exploitation of around 41 billion cubic meters of gas and 500 million barrels of crude oil.
(updated at 12,45)
