TotalEnergies Signs Agreement to Sell 10% Stake in Nigeria’s Renaissance JV
Key Facts
TotalEnergies announced on January 14, 2026, that its subsidiary TotalEnergies EP Nigeria had signed a sale and purchase agreement with Vaaris to exit its 10% non-operated interest in Nigeria’s Renaissance joint venture. The agreement concerns a stake in the project’s oil licences, while the public statement does not confirm that the sale has been completed. Closing was subject to customary conditions, including regulatory approvals. The confirmed development, therefore, is the signing of the agreement, not the final transfer of the stake to the buyer. Completion of the transaction could not be verified from a public statement.
The Renaissance project, formerly known as the SPDC joint venture, comprises 18 licences in the Niger Delta. Ownership, according to the agreement announcement, is split between the Nigerian National Petroleum Company with a 55% stake, Renaissance Africa Energy with 30% as operator, TotalEnergies with 10%, and Agip Energy and Natural Resources Nigeria with 5%. This structure shows that TotalEnergies is a non-operating minority partner in the project. The announced transaction covers its interest in the oil licences, while the statement sets out different treatment for the licences whose production is predominantly gas. The agreement therefore does not mean the company is exiting all of its economic interests linked to the project.
The three gas licences covered by the agreement are OML 23, OML 28 and OML 77, which primarily produce gas. The agreement provides for the transfer of TotalEnergies’ participating interest in them to Vaaris, while TotalEnergies retains the full economic interest in the licences. The company said the three licences currently account for 50% of gas supplies to Nigeria LNG. The arrangement highlights the difference between transferring the participating interest to the buyer and the French company continuing to receive the full economic benefit from gas production. It also makes the three licences a central part of the infrastructure supplying the LNG project, according to the company’s statement.
The transaction follows an earlier agreement with Chappal Energies announced in 2024, but the conditions precedent to closing could not be met, according to TotalEnergies’ first-quarter 2026 financial report. The report said the subsidiary signed a new agreement with Vaaris on January 13, 2026, before the company announced it the following day. This shows that the current agreement followed the failure of an earlier sale process for the same asset. In the context of the company’s broader presence in Nigeria, TotalEnergies said in its statement that the country contributed about 209,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day to its hydrocarbon production in 2024. That figure places the transaction within the company’s operations in the country, but refers to its overall Nigerian production and does not specify output from the stake covered by the agreement.
The sale has also drawn environmental and legal scrutiny. Reuters reported that non-profit organisations, including Friends of the Earth France, filed a case in a French civil court in July 2026 seeking environmental documents related to the Nigerian asset being offered for sale. The report said the groups want access to environmental management plans included in the sale agreement. It quoted Ken Henshaw, executive director of We the People, as saying: "None of the divestments so far have included a plan to address environmental damage." The dispute adds a question of transparency around environmental obligations accompanying the asset sale, alongside the approvals required to close the agreement. The public agreement announcement set no deadline for closing, saying only that it was subject to customary conditions and regulatory approvals.
In its first-quarter 2026 financial statements, TotalEnergies reported assets classified as held for sale of $1.407 billion and liabilities of $1.070 billion on its balance sheet as of March 31. The report said the assets concerned were mainly tangible assets, without linking these figures specifically to the Renaissance agreement. In the market, TotalEnergies shares closed at $93.76 on October 26, 2026, according to L7 data. Completion of the transaction remains subject to the conditions and approvals the company announced when it signed the agreement. The public source gave no specific date for closing.