LAGOS, May 28 (Reuters) – Nigeria’s newly drafted oil bill, which is now close to being finalised, mandates that oil firms must stop flaring gas by the end of this year, and that if they don’t they can be fined.

Africa’s top oil producer has long pledged but failed to end flaring, and although officials say it has fallen in the past decade, Nigeria remains the world’s second biggest burner of gas associated with crude oil production after Russia. Many see the new target date to end flaring as unrealistic.

“Natural gas shall not be flared or vented after 31st December, 2012, in any oil and gas production operation, block or field, onshore or offshore, or gas facility,” except under exceptional and temporary circumstances, says a new draft of the long-awaited Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB).

“Any licensee who flares or vents gas without the permission of the Minister in (special) circumstances … shall be liable to pay a fine which shall not be less than the value of gas.”

Nigeria flared some 30 billion standard cubic feet of gas in January, according to the latest figures from the state oil firm, published by the national news agency. That is equivalent to a third of the annual consumption of an industrialised country like the United Kingdom.

Of that, ExxonMobil topped the list, flaring 9.85 billion cubic feet out of 38.64 billion produced, while Chevron flared 8.25 billion cubic feet out of 19.23 billion.

Leading operator Shell, which runs Nigeria’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant, flared 5.44 billion cubic feet, a relatively small part of the 76.4 billion it produced.

ABUJA/LAGOS (Reuters) – A new draft of Nigeria’s long delayed oil bill, whose passage is needed to unblock billions of dollars of stalled investment into exploration and production, will be finalized this week, sources close to the matter said on Thursday.

A copy of the 200-page Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) obtained by Reuters includes plans to partly privatize and list the state oil firm, tax oil company profits at 20 percent for deep offshore and 50 percent for shallow or onshore, and give the oil minister supervisory powers over all institutions in the industry.

Current oil firm profit taxes are not published. A spokesman for Nigeria’s leading operator Shell said he did not know what current tax rates were.

Oil majors have worried that the PIB could increase the fiscal burden on them, and it is not clear whether license renewals that have been ongoing will include exemptions from any unfavorable change of terms brought about by the law.

The PIB has been years in the making and the delays have caused uncertainty over the future framework of working in Nigeria, costing the industry billions of dollars of potential investment and the government much-needed revenues.

Without it, most analysts expect oil production in Nigeria to decline substantially over the next few years.

Nigeria exports more than 2 million barrels a day (bpd) of crude oil popular with U.S. buyers because it is light and easy to refine. China and India are also growing takers.

LAGOS, May 14 (Reuters) – Royal Dutch Shell’s Nigeria joint venture is losing 43,000 barrels a day (bpd) of crude oil to theft, while deliberate damage to pipelines accounted for more than three quarters of oil spilt last year, the oil major said.

Shell has increasingly complained in recent months about bunkering – tapping into pipelines to steal the oil - which it says is on the rise in Nigeria.

The company wants a greater security crackdown on the practice, which it has estimated deprives the country of some 150,000 bpd.

“The Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria (SPDC) … suffers a daily loss of at least 43,000 barrels to crude theft and illegal bunkering, in a trend that negatively impacts the environment, robs the country of badly-needed revenue and fuels criminality in communities,” SPDC spokesman Precious Okolobo said in a statement on Monday.

SPDC is a Shell-run joint venture between Nigeria’s state oil firm, Shell, EPNL and Agip.

Okolobo added that bunkering had been the cause of “11,806 barrels spilled from SPDC facilities in 118 incidents,” last year.

Pipeline sabotage by militants campaigning for a greater share of oil revenues, or by local criminals looking to benefit from clean-up contracts, are common in the delta, a network of creeks and wetlands where the Niger river empties into the Atlantic, and where Nigeria’s oil industry is based.

LAGOS, April 23 (Reuters) – An oil spill in Nigeria for which Royal Dutch Shell is being sued for tens of millions of dollars in a London court was at least 60 times worse than it announced, a report by Amnesty International said on Monday, citing research it commissioned.

A Shell spokeswoman said it was not appropriate to comment on the estimate while the spill was still the subject of litigation, adding that efforts to clean up had been hampered by insecurity in the Bodo area of the Niger Delta and by oil theft that had caused even more oil to be spilt since.

A group of 11,000 Nigerians launched a suit against Royal Dutch Shell at the London High Court last month for two oil spills in 2008/9 that they say destroyed their livelihoods.

SPDC, a Shell-run joint venture between the state oil firm, which holds 55 percent, Shell, with 30 percent, EPNL, with 10 percent and Agip, with 5 percent, admits responsibility for two spills that devastated the Bodo fishing communities in the Niger Delta, a labyrinth of creeks and swaps.

The Amnesty accusation is based on footage of one of the oil leaks sent to Washington State-based research company Accufacts, which examined the flow rate from the film and found it to be between one and three barrels a minute.

Amnesty extrapolated that the total oil spilled “over the 72 day period is between 103,000 barrels and 311,000 barrels.”

The high end of Amnesty’s estimate is still only half the 600,000 barrels that lawyer Martyn Day, who represents the affected Bodo communities, says may have been spilt. But it is much greater than the 1,640 barrels Shell says flowed out.

LAGOS, April 19 (Reuters) – Pan-African lender United Bank for Africa is in talks with billionaire industrialist Aliko Dangote, Africa’s richest man, for a partnership to provide banking services to his Dangote Cement empire in 13 countries, its chief executive said.

Phillips Oduoza told the Reuters Africa Investment Summit in Lagos on Thursday the move would leverage their overlapping presence across the continent.

UBA is in all of the 14 countries in which Dangote is building cement plants, except for South Africa.

“We are thinking of a strategic partnership between UBA and Dangote (Cement). We are still at the discussion stage,” Oduoza said. “Thankfully in all countries where he has presence, except one, we also have a presence. We can standardise services.”

Services would include payment collection and short-term financing of cement distributors working with Dangote.

Oduoza also said the bank was aiming to grow its loan book across the continent by 15 percent to 100 billion naira ($636 million) in 2012.

Non-Nigerian countries make up 18 percent of UBA’s portfolio, and the aim would be to grow that to 25 percent in the next few years, he said.

LAGOS (Reuters) – Nigeria’s Stock Exchange is three weeks away from completing a revamp that will see it relax restrictions on price swings, adopt the Nasdaq platform, open into U.S. trading hours and allow short selling, its executive director said on Tuesday.

Ade Bajomo, executive director of market operations and technology, told the Reuters Africa Investment Summit in Lagos the bourse would implement new rules allowing stock prices to move by up to 10 percent a day, from its current 5 percent, and introduce market makers who can borrow stocks for shorting.

“What would we like to be when we grow up? I think Singapore,” he said. “A market that rises up from almost zero, a market run in an efficient manner … a financial hub.”

Under the new system to be implemented by next month, Africa’s second biggest bourse will open until 4 p.m. (1500 GMT) to overlap with U.S. markets. It currently shuts by 2.30 p.m.

A $10 million deal with Nasdaq (NDAQ.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) to adopt its trading platform would be signed next week, making it easier for foreign and local investors to trade electronically, Bajomo said.

Africa’s second biggest bourse is automated, but the technology is old and price rather than quote driven. The new system will make the market more efficient, liquid and easier for traders to use, Bajomo said.

“One of the key initiatives is market-making, securities lending and short selling,” he said. “We want to build a hybrid market, with market-makers to create liquidity.”

LAGOS (Reuters) – Nigeria’s banking crisis is over and the sector’s earnings should see a substantial recovery when results come in for the first quarter of 2012, the chief executive of state-owned “bad bank” AMCON said on Monday.

AMCON was set up in 2010 to clean up the banking system in Africa’s most populous country following a $4 billion rescue of nine lenders that came close to collapse.

Speaking to the Reuters Africa Investment Summit in Lagos, Asset Management Co of Nigeria (AMCON) CEO Mustapha Chike-Obi said earnings in the banking sector would recover well in the first quarter of 2012, after suffering last year because of writedowns on bad debt.

“The numbers we’re seeing in the first quarter are very robust,” he said, adding that three nationalized banks were all now profitable.

“We should wait to the second quarter of this year before passing judgment — I will not tell you that nothing surprising can come up — but the banking crisis of 2007-2009 is over”.

The banking sector was the second worst performing index on the local exchange in 2011, falling 32 percent, with only oil and gas doing worse.

Seven out of 15 local lenders listed on the exchange have announced 2011 earnings, with most posting higher-than-expected loan losses. FCMB (FCMB.LG: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) has reported a loss while UBA (UBA.LG: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) issued a profit warning.

LAGOS, March 19 (Reuters) – Nigeria’s super rich are no strangers to conspicuous consumption, and there’s no better way to flaunt your wealth than by buying a brand new European sports car.

German carmaker Porsche officially opened a new car dealership on Friday in the heart of Lagos’ wealthiest district, Victoria Island, a place with one of the world’s highest concentrations of millionaires.

There are already dealerships specialising in Aston Martin and Lamborghini, but Porsche hopes to capitalise on a promise of providing sturdier vehicles that can cope with Nigeria’s rough roads. Its presence is being seen as a vote of confidence in the West African nation’s fast-growing economy.

Porsche also plans to set up an operation in the capital Abuja, where roads are newly built – a better market for the 911 sports model – and where politicians are amongst the world’s most highly paid.

“The African continent, and in particular Nigeria, is of growing importance to us at Porsche,” the company’s Middle East and Africa head George Wills said, unveiling the new 911 model.

High-end goods producers are increasingly targeting sub-Saharan Africa, as its economic growth starts to dwarf other continents and rich Western countries face a slowdown.

Nigeria, Africa’s second biggest economy, grew 7.68 percent in the last quarter of 2011, one of the fastest in the world.

LAGOS (Reuters) – A Briton and an Italian held hostage in Nigeria were killed by their captors on Thursday as a joint British-Nigerian rescue mission stormed a compound to try to free the men, witnesses and security officials said.

British Prime Minister David Cameron said he had authorized the Britain’s involvement in the rescue attempt after being told the men’s lives were in “imminent and growing danger”.

Briton Chris McManus and Italian Franco Lamolinara, were working for a construction company when they were seized in May from their accommodation in Kebbi state, near Nigeria’s northwestern borders with Niger and Benin.

A witness told Reuters that security forces had tried to force their way into a compound in Sokoto, northwest Nigeria.

“The security agencies tried to break into the house but there was resistance. The people inside the house were shooting at them and they returned fire. They exchanged fire for some time,” said Mahmoud Abubakar, who lives on the same street.

“I saw a military truck come out of the compound with two bodies on it. I didn’t see their colour, because they were covered with leaves,” he added.

The captors were a faction of militant Islamist sect Boko Haram, a senior official at Nigeria’s State Security Service said.

ABUJA/LAGOS (Reuters) – Jolted by a public outcry since the start of the year, Nigeria’s government has announced a series of measures to address oil industry corruption in the world’s eighth biggest producer. It is an issue that may come to define Goodluck Jonathan’s presidency.

An important supplier to the United States because of the oil’s high gasoline content, Nigeria has attracted billions of dollars of investments from the world’s top oil companies. Yet poverty in Africa’s second biggest economy is rising, with almost 100 million people living on less than $1 a day, data released last month shows. The percentage of Nigerians living in absolute poverty – those who can afford only the bare essentials of food, shelter and clothing – has risen to around 60 percent.

Two recent audits of the oil industry reviewed by Reuters show billions of dollars in irregularities despite years of government promises to clean it up.

In January hundreds of thousands of Nigerians took part in the biggest protests in the history of Africa’s most populous nation. Sparked by a hike in state-subsidized petrol prices, the protests were fuelled by anger at the graft that has for decades channeled oil wealth into the pockets of a minority. Corruption has left oil-dependent Nigeria unable to cater for its basic health, infrastructure or education needs.

Goodluck Jonathan won a presidential election last year that observers said was Nigeria’s cleanest since the end of military rule in 1999. Many voters had hopes that he would root out corruption. Amongst the actions announced by Oil Minister Diezani Allison-Madueke in January was the hiring of two accounting firms to audit the industry.

But even as the minister was announcing the new measures, auditors working for the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) – a government-funded watchdog – were winding up another investigation into the oil industry. That study, examining the period 2006-2008, was sent to the relevant government authorities at the end of January. A copy reviewed by Reuters is likely to add to the pressure on Jonathan for reform. It lists discrepancies and shows billions of dollars missing from Nigeria’s oil revenues.

THE MISSING BILLIONS