LONDON, March 4 (Reuters) - Commodity trader and minerGlencore confirmed on Tuesday its interest in buyingoil assets that oil major Shell is selling in Nigeria.
A source said last month that Glencore and commodity tradinghouse Mercuria were among the short-listed consortiums expectedto make final bids on Nigerian energy assets worth around $3billion that Shell and another two oil majors are selling.
Shell is selling its 30 percent stake in four oilblocks, with France's Total and Italy's Eni also looking to divest their 10 percent and 5 percent stakes.
The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) owns theremaining 55 percent.
Shell is also selling the 97-km (60-mile) Nembe Creek oilpipeline, which has been regularly attacked by oil thieves.
"We are always interested in every assets that comes forsale. We always look at it and check if we can satisfy ourreturns criteria," Glencore's chief executive Ivan Glasenbergsaid, when asked about the Nigerian assets at a presentation ofresults.
Together with Macquarie Group Glencore had alsomade an unsuccessful attempt to buy Shell's downstreamAustralian assets, which were then sold to oil trader Vitol and the Abu Dhabi Investment Council for about A$2.4billion ($2.2 billion) last month.
"It's no secret we were looking at Shell's disposal inAustralia but we couldn't compete. The number they bought at didnot meet our return (criteria)," Glasenberg said.
Among other assets the trader and miner would look at is BHPBilliton's loss-making Nickel West business inAustralia, which Glencore said has some synergies with its ownnickel operations in the area.
