OIL BARONNESS, UJU IFEJIKA'S BRITTANIA-U AT WAR WITH AUSTIN AVURU'S SEPLAT OVER CHEVRON'S $15BILLION ASSETS

Some of the Oil Blocks been put up for sale by Oil giant, Chevron has become a subject of bitter quarrel between two Nigeria's Oil moguls - Uju Ifejika's Brittania-U Limited and Austin Avuru's Seplat Petroleum Development Company Limited. The two companies have been in court for sometime now over the Oil mining assets.

As the story goes Chevron had offered for sale some of it's assets OMLs 52, 53 and 55 and as usual invited bids from interested firms. Trouble however cropped up when Chevron after putting the assets through a public bidding process, failed to make a public announcement of a winner, a reserve bidder and unsuccessful bids. It then allegedly turned its back on the perceived highest bidder, Brittania-U Nigeria Limited, and began to deal with Seplat behind the scene whose bid was lesser.

Brittania-U went to court to contest Chevron’s action of not declaring it winner after it offered $1.67 billion bid for the three assets, an amount later revised to $1.015 billion after both companies’ officials met in Houston, United States. Seplat offered a bid of $630 million for the same assets.

The two companies headed to court and after hearing arguments from both parties, Justice Datijo Muhammed warned that status quo should be maintained, that Chevron should not go ahead with it’s deal with Seplat. The Supreme Court yesterday however fixed May 18, 2015 for hearing of the mandatory application filed by Brittania-U Limited against Seplat Petroleum Development Company Limited and Chevron, seeking to reverse any step taken to sell the latter’s oil mining assets OML52,
OML 53 and OML 55 to Seplat.