Nigerian court to rule on March 13 on Shell, ENI dispute with authorities

A Nigerian court will rule on March 13 on a request by Royal Dutch Shell and Italy's Eni to lift the temporary seizing of a long-disputed oilfield, a judge said on Monday. The court last month ordered the temporary seizing of assets and the transfer of operations of the OPL 245 field owned by Shell and Eni, among others, to the federal government on request of the country's financial crime agency EFCC. The case is the latest of several inquiries, following those by Dutch and Italian authorities, into the 2011 purchase of the OPL 245 block, which could hold up to 9.23 billion barrels of oil, according to industry figures.