Nigeria’s oil production has dropped again as a third major crude-export facility was disrupted, this time by accidental damage rather than militant attacks.
“The renewed activities of the militants in the Niger Delta is seriously affecting our oil production, in fact it is now down to 1.65 [m b /d]“, Kemi Adeosun said on state-owned NTA television on Friday morning, Reuters reported.
The federal budget signed into law a week ago counts on 2.2m b/d but output has been several hundreds of barrels below that–around 1.7 to 1.8m b/d for the past several months, Nigeria, long Africa’s top oil producer, is as of this week pumping less than Angola.
Production began sliding in February when a new militant group calling itself the Niger Delta Avengers claimed an attack on an underwater pipeline running that forced Royal Dutch Shell to shut down its Forcados export terminal, knocking off at least 250,000 bpd.
The government has said it will be reopened this month but it is not clear if repairs have started.
Earlier this week Shell declared force majeure on exports of Bonny Light crude after a leak on one of its trunk lines in the Delta, days after Chevron had to shut a platform falling an attack also claimed by the Niger Delta Avengers.
It is not clear who is behind the new group but the statements attributed to them that are being circulated on social media suggest their demands are similar to those of militants who waged an insurgency until 2009 that slashed the country’s oil production.
The new group has vowed to bring Nigeria’s oil output to zero.
Meanwhile Exxon Mobil Corp. declared force majeure — a legal clause that allows it to stop deliveries without breaching contracts — on shipments of Qua Iboe late on Thursday, according to two traders from companies that purchase the crude, who asked not to be identified because the information isn’t public.
The Bonny Light and Forcados oil grades were already disrupted following militant attacks.
The three facilities ship more than 700,000 barrels a day. An Exxon spokesman in Nigeria was not immediately available to comment.
“We expected more supply disruptions out of Nigeria this week, but the pace of new supply problems from that country beats our expectations,” Olivier Jakob, managing director of consultant Petromatrix GmbH, said in a note.
Production may not be much above 1 million barrels a day, he said.
A resurgence in militant attacks in Nigeria’s oil-producing region has cut output by as much as 600,000 barrels a day to 1.4 million a day and “massively diminished” the nation’s income, Emmanuel Kachikwu, Nigeria’s minister of state for petroleum, said Thursday in a broadcast on Lagos-based Channels Television, before the disruption to Qua Iboe.
An armed group calling itself the Niger Delta Avengers later warned of more attacks to come.
Brent crude has risen 5.2 per cent this week to $47.72 a barrel as of 10:15 a.m. in London as supply halts in Nigeria, wildfires in Canada’s oil-sands region and declining U.S. output combined to curb a global surplus.
