Nigeria to Pull Shell Ogoni License

The Nigerian government will revoke Royal Dutch Shell PLC’s (RDSB.LN) oil license in the country’s Ogoniland, although the timing hasn’t been officially set, a Nigerian oil official said Friday.

“We are going to revoke Shell’s license to operate in Ogoniland,” Bamibele Ogedenjbe, an assistant director at the Nigeria Department of Petroleum Resources, told reporters on the sideline of an energy conference here. DPR oversees the permitting of Nigeria’s hydrocarbon licenses.

The reason for the West African country’s planned revocation of Shell’s drilling rights in Ogoni “is the inactivity by Shell to do anything with its license,” Ogedenjbe said.

Shell stopped operating in Ogoniland in 1993 after the company was hit by a storm of protests by locals over its operations in the area, in the Western Niger Delta. Most of Nigeria’s oil is produced in the delta.

Dow Jones Newswires