On the June 21, 2019, the coalition of civil society organizations (Policy Alert, Publish What You Pay the United Kingdom, Publish What You Pay Nigeria, and Stakeholder Democracy Network) working on the #WetinWeGain campaign wrote to Seven Energy International Limited / Seven Exploration & Production Limited to request for clarification of Seven Energy’s equity shares in OMLs 13 and 14 and its payments-to-governments disclosure for these blocks.
In details, they sought information on the following concerns:
- The percentage equity stake currently held by Seven Energy in OML 13 and OML 14.
- The existence (if any) of changes in the equity stake held by Seven Energy in OML 13 and 14.
- The payments made by Seven Energy to the Nigerian government and its entities for OML 13 and OML 14 since 2015.
On July 5, 2019, a representative of Seven Energy replied the letter aforementioned above. He stated that Seven E&P Limited who the letter was addressed to doesn’t own any or operate an asset in OML 13 and OML 14. He went further to state that the “relevant entities for the fields are Universal Energy Resources Ltd (“UERL”), an operator, which has a 51% interest in the Stubb Creek Marginal Field, which lies within the OML14 area and Seven Uquo Gas Ltd (“SUGL”) (a non-operator) which has a 40% interest in the Uquo Marginal Field, which lies within the OML13 area.” On the issue of payments made to governments by Seven Energy and its subsidiaries, he stated that “SUGL has pioneer status tax holiday so has not made any income tax payment. Not being the operator of the Uquo Marginal Field, SUGL also does not pay WHT or VAT on contractor transactions as Frontier Oil Ltd (“FOL”), being the operator, is responsible for contracting with vendors and paying the associated taxes to the government. SUGL pays NDDC and Royalty through FOL via cash call.”
Finally, he asserted that both FOL and SUGL are wholly owned subsidiaries of Seven Energy International Ltd.”
