Nigeria regains 200,000 bpd oil export as Bonga bounces back

FORTY-FOUR days after closure, the Shell-operated Bonga oil field has resumed production, thereby making Nigeria to regain its lost oil export of 200,000 barrels per day (bpd).Shell Nigerian Exploration and Production Company (SNEPCo), an upstream arm of Shell company in Nigeria has resumed production at its Bonga oil field, which was shut for maintenance in February.Confirming this in a statement made available to The Guardian yesterday, the Media Relations Manager of Shell, Tony Okonedo, said: SNEPCo resumed production at Bonga yesterday (April 13) after completing the scheduled statutory inspection and maintenance work.According to him, the maintenance work, which commenced on February 28 this year, was executed safely and within schedule.Although he declined to state the take-off capacity, Okonedo said that  production would be gradually ramped up over the coming weeks.Bonga field, located 120 kilometres (75 miles) in the Atlantic waters offshore Nigeria, has the capacity to pump about 200,000 barrels of crude and 150 million cubic feet of gas a day, Shell said. It also supplies natural gas to Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas Limited liquefaction plant on the coastal Bonny Island that supplies long-term buyers in Europe.The coming on stream of Bonga would automatically shoot up the oil exports from the nation and increase crude earnings in subsequent months.At shut-down, Bonga, one of the countrys successful deepwater fields resulted in a reduction of the nations oil export figure, which officials said stood at 2.4 million barrels a day before the start of the Bonga maintenance.Meanwhile, there are reports that the differentials on Nigerian sweet crude held unchanged around their lowest level since late February in relatively thin trading this week.A trader said buyers had already started looking into June programmes and new official selling prices for May.However, Nigerias official selling prices (OSPs) were set slightly below expectations this week, while loading programmes for May showed bigger volumes than in April.The preliminary loading schedule indicated that benchmark Qua Iboe would load 13 cargoes or around 398,000 barrels per day (bpd) in May, unchanged from April plan.Six Bonny Light cargoes will be shipped in May, compared with a revised plan of seven for April, the programmes showed. Shipments of both crudes are 950,000 barrels each.Including some smaller cargoes, the country will also export three Yoho, eight Brass River, two EA, five Erha, and six Forcados shipments, according to the programmes.The remaining loading schedules are yet to be released.
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