Nigeria probes gas contract of $9b claim

ABUJA: Nigerian security agencies will open an investigation after a British judge paved the way for a private firm to seize more than $9 billion in government assets over a failed gas deal, the information minister said Tuesday.

The judge in London this month gave Process and Industrial Developments Limited (P&ID) the green light to claim assets worth about a fifth of Nigeria´s foreign reserves over the collapse of the 2010 agreement.

The ruling was the latest twist in the decade-long dispute over the deal that broke down before work had started on a planned state-of-the-art gas processing plant in southeast Nigeria.

P&ID -- widely reported to be registered in the British Virgin Islands -- sued the Nigerian government for breaching the agreement by failing to provide the gas or install the promised pipelines.