Italy’s major Eni has announced plans to sell $1.65 billion of its West African assets in Côte d’Ivoire and the Republic of Congo to Vitol. This move is part of Eni's ongoing strategy to generate short-term cash by reshaping its asset portfolio.
Eni will retain interests in the assets targeted for partial divestment including the giant Baleine discovery, Eni’s first development in Cote d’Ivoire and Africa’s first net-zero emissions development. Eni plans to dilute its 77.25% ownership interest by selling off a 30% participating stake to Vitol.
Also part of the deal is the Republic of Congo’s first LNG export project, Congo LNG, in which Vitol will acquire a 25% participating stake out of Eni’s existing 65%, Eni and Vitol reported in separate announcements made on 19 March.
The agreement covers the value of Vitol’s acquisition of oil- and gas-producing assets as well as exploration blocks and assets undergoing appraisal and development, building on the two companies’ collaboration in West Africa, Eni said in its news release.
Eni and Vitol already partner in Ghana in the gas-producing Offshore Cape Three Points (OCTP) joint venture and the related Block 4 exploration license.
OCTP is Sub-Saharan Africa’s only deepwater nonassociated gas development entirely dedicated to domestic consumption. It provides 180 MMscf/D of gas, enough to convert half of Ghana’s power-generation capacity to gas, according to Eni.
Eni Ghana holds a 44.44% operator interest in OCTP with partners Vitol Upstream Ghana Ltd. (35.5%) and the Ghana National Petroleum Corp. (20%.
Eni’s decision to sell stakes to Vitol in its other West Africa assets aligns with a broader corporate strategy of optimizing its upstream portfolio by reducing stakes in some assets to lower financial risks and extract value early in a project’s development—the so-called “dual exploration model.”
Eni CEO Lays Out the Strategy
The Italian major’s CEO Claudio Descalzi laid out this strategy a year ago when he presented the company’s 2024–2027 strategic plan and said that upstream would account for more than half of Eni’s near-term corporate divestment target.
Discovered in 2021—2 decades after Côte d’Ivoire’s last commercial discovery—Baleine was fast tracked into production in 2023 in record time.
Its current production exceeds 60,000 BOED. With Phase 3, currently under study, total production is set to reach 150,000 BOPD and 200 MMcf/D of associated gas, which is destined entirely for domestic use to strengthen Côte d’Ivoire’s role as a regional energy hub.
The Congo LNG project began exporting liquefied natural gas in February 2024. It currently produces 1 Bcm/year of LNG; with Phase 2 of the project scheduled to start at the end of 2025 enabling gas exports from Congo to rise to 4.5 Bcm/year.
