Nigeria’s oil output could improve as Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) says it has resumed loading on Nigeria’s Forcados crude oil after a months-long outage over a pipeline leak at the export terminal.
Exports from Forcados which was scheduled to ship 220,000 barrels per day (bpd) in July, were halted on the evening of July 12 after workers saw fumes near a single buoy mooring where oil was being loaded onto a vessel.
A single buoy mooring is essentially a floating loading facility, allowing huge tankers to dock offshore and discharge cargoes.
A spokesman of the Shell Nigerian unit told Reuters that injections into the terminal were reduced following the report, but no force majeure was announced.
The cause of the suspension was identified by a collaborative investigation involving business and community representatives, as well as government agencies, said a Shell representative.
The suspension of Forcados loadings contributed to Nigeria being the second-largest contributor to the reduction in OPEC crude oil output in July.
Largely due to the outage, Nigeria’s crude oil production fell to 1.29 million bpd in July, according to the latest report by the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission.
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