At the Nigeria International Petroleum Summit currently ongoing at Abuja, Total Nigeria’s Deputy Managing Director in charge of Deepwater District, Musa Kida stated that the company’s Egina project would be contributing 23 per cent of Nigeria’s daily oil production once completed.
“With Egina, Total will be operating about 23 per cent of the national production and we are proud to be significant contributors in securing Nigeria’s oil and gas future as Egina set unprecedented records of local content and capacity building,” Kida said in Abuja.
According to Kida, “Egina stands as a great testament to Total’s commitment to Nigeria and determination to support and advance local content development as 77 per cent of man-hours worked on the project was done locally with 60,000 tons of equipment fabricated in Nigeria by local contractors.”
Recall early this month, Global rating agency, Fitch Ratings forecasted that Nigeria’s crude oil output will grow by 6.3 percent in 2019 thanks to increasing oil production from Total’s Egina while gas production is expected to rise by 7.6 percent.
According to Fitch Solutions research note, Nigeria oil production growth is expected to “limited” after 2019 due to lack of new projects.
“Production growth in 2022 and 2023 is contingent on the sanction of investment in the Bonga southwest field due this year,” Fitch said.
The situation with Egina is a dilemma for Nigeria, which wasn’t spared from the new OPEC/non-OPEC production cuts this time around, is expected to contribute with up to 40,000 bpd to the 800,000 bpd OPEC had pledged to cut from January, which is some 2.5 percent of Nigeria’s current crude oil production of 1.7 million bpd, Minister of State for Petroleum Resources Ibe Kachikwu said in the first half of December.
DIPO OLADEHINDE
