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Obafemi Oredein, Special to Dow Jones Newswires
IBADAN, Nigeria
EnergiesNet.com 04 07 2022
Nigeria plans to boost daily oil production by adding 800,000 barrels from the projects of some international oil companies that had stalled due to funding and other reasons, the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission said.
Gbenga Komolafe, chief executive officer of NUPRC, said Thursday the government was relying on the lift in output to come from projects including TotalEnergies SE’s Preowei, Shell PLC’s Bonga South West Aparo and Bonga North, as well as other projects being executed by other companies.
“Some of these projects, including the Preowei project, the Bonga South West Aparo project, the Bonga North project, and a host of others, when completed, all have the combined capacity to add upwards of 800,000 bopd (barrels of oil per day) to Nigeria’s production figures,” Mr. Komolafe said in a statement on NUPRC’s website.
He said Preowei is a deep-water hydrocarbon pool located north of the Egina field in the Oil Mining Lease 130, off Nigeria with more than 150 million barrels of oil and gas equivalent, which is expected to pump about 50,000 bopd at its peak.
A final investment decision on Preowei was set for the fourth quarter of 2020 but was stalled following its suspension that year by TotalEnergies due to Covid-19 constraints, concerns about new fiscal provisions in Nigeria’s oil sector, as well as a fall in oil prices.
Mr. Komolafe said Shell’s Bonga South West floating production storage and offloading facility, with a capacity to pump 150,000 bopd, is another project the government is relying on to boost daily oil production by 800,000 barrels.
Bonga South West is expected to add about one billion barrels to Nigeria’s oil reserves. However, in February the contract for the development of the floating production storage and offloading unit for the project was delayed and the tendering process was put on hold till 2024, Mr. Komolafe said.
Nigeria, Africa’s largest oil exporter, has been underperforming in oil production, and hasn’t meet its production quota with the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries for several months running. Nigeria’s OPEC quota is about 1.7 million barrels a day.
Nigeria currently produces around 1.4 million barrels a day, down from its usual output of 2.2 million.
Mr. Komolafe said that with the NUPRC now empowered by the Petroleum Industry Act, the government could push ahead with development projects. The act was signed into law by President Muhammadu Buhari in August with the aim of overhauling the country’s oil-and-gas industry.
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wsj.com 04 05 2022
