Abuja – The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has bagged the Thompson Reuters 2015 Oil deal award.

This is contained in a statement signed by Mr Ohi Alegbe,Group General Manager,Group Public Affairs Division, on Wednesday in Abuja.

It said that the Joint Finance Team of the NNPC and its Joint Venture Partners, Chevron Nigeria Limited clinched the prestigious award.

It name the awards as Thomson Reuters /PFI Magazine “Africa and Middle East Oil Deal of the Year Award 2015’’.

It stated that the award was in recognition of the novel 1.2 bn dollar multi-year drilling financing package for 36 Offshore/Onshore Oil wells under the NNPC/CNL Joint Venture.

This, it said, was initiated under the Accelerated Upstream Financing Programme executed at a signing ceremony in London in September, 2015.

It added that the initiative was designed by the NNPC to address the perennial challenge experienced by the Federal Government in providing its counter-part funding of Joint Venture upstream activities.

“Codenamed Project Cheetah, the 1.2bn dollar alternative financing package, was the first to combine funding of both oil production as well as domestic gas to support power generation in Nigeria from a medley of carefully sequenced offshore and onshore wells.

“The deal is projected to fund 36 wells and deliver 41, 000 barrels of crude oil per day and projected peak incremental production of 127 million standard cubic feet of gas per day (mmscfd) in the years ahead,” it said .

It noted that the package was projected to generate between two billion dollars to five billion dollars of incremental revenues to the Nigerian government over the life of the project (subject to prevailing oil price in the upcoming years).

It said that the funding package was being financed by a consortium of Nigerian and International lenders led by Standard Chartered Bank and UBA