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Bloomberg: BG Secures 45% Stake in Nigerian Offshore Exploration Project: Friday 20 January 2006

Jan. 20 (Bloomberg) -- BG Group Plc, the U.K.'s third-biggest oil and gas company, said it secured a 45 percent stake in a Nigerian offshore exploration venture.

The U.K. company signed a production sharing contract to work at Block 332, BG said today in a statement distributed through the Regulatory News Service. Sahara Energy Exploration & Production Ltd. and Seven Energy Nigeria Ltd. will hold 45 percent and 10 percent stakes, respectively, in the project, BG said.

``The agreement marks BG's entry into the Nigerian upstream sector,'' said BG, which will operate the venture. The partners signed the contract yesterday with Nigerian National Petroleum Corp.

Reading, England-based BG is entering Nigeria for exploration at a time when Royal Dutch Shell Plc's venture in the country has been losing 221,000 barrels a day in output, about 9 percent of the West African nation's total, after pipeline attacks and kidnappings disrupted production.

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