Nigeria’s NNPC Towers, Abuja
London – State-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation’s oil production has risen to 2.4 million b/d, but the OPEC member country has 400,000 b/d of production shut-in following the closure of three key oil pipelines in the Niger Delta due to theft, NNPC said Sunday.
Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics, or NBS, on September 6 said the country’s oil production had averaged 2.29 million b/d in the second quarter of this year.
“Indeed, the rise in crude oil production in the country to 2.4 million barrels per day was as a result of the recent action taken by the petroleum minister, Diezani Alison-Madueke,” NNPC spokeswoman Tumini Green said in the statement.
Green listed steps taken by the minister to set up a special security strategy committee — headed by the southern Delta state’s governor Emmanuel Uduaghan – which has stepped up security of pipelines in the region.
She, however, added that pipeline vandalism and crude oil theft has resulted in the shutdown of the Shell-operated Trans Niger Pipeline and Nembe Creek Pipeline, and Eni-operated Tebidaba-Brass Pipeline, “accounting for a shut-in of 400,000 b/d” currently.
Shell on Saturday said it had shut its 150,000 b/d Trans Niger Pipeline barely a week after it was restarted, because of new leaks likely due to fresh sabotage by oil thieves. Shell had shut the Nembe Creek trunkline, which feeds into the Bonny export terminal, on September 6.
Shell on Saturday also said its Trans Escravos Pipeline that was shut September 12 for removal of illegal connections had reopened on September 16. The NNPC spokeswoman did not say when the Tebidaba-Brass Pipeline was shut.
She said that the upsurge on crude oil theft was hampering Nigeria’s efforts at meeting its production target, set at 2.53 million b/d for 2013, and hitting hard on the country’s economy.
Large scale oil theft forced Nigeria to lower its production target for 2014 to 2.383 million b/d, compared to the 2.53 million b/d oil output target this year, government data released last week showed.
