Nigeria seeking nearly US$20 billion from international oil majors in back taxes could delay the approval of a major offshore oil project, Shell’s Upstream Director Andy Brown told Reuters on Tuesday. Nigeria has asked the oil majors operating in the country to pay a total of almost US$20 billion in outstanding taxes and royalties that it says is owed to various Nigerian states, Reuters reported last week, citing government and industry sources. Shell, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Total, Eni, and Equinor have each been asked to pay the federal Nigerian government between US$2.5 billion and US$5 billion, according to Reuters’ sources who saw letters sent to the oil majors earlier this year via a government debt-collection division. Shell, a major investor in Nigeria’s oil industry, will have to take the tax claim seriously, “but we think it has no merits,” Brown told Reuters on the sidelines of the International Petroleum Week […]