Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Limited (SPDC) has lifted the force majure on its Bonny Light grade, leading to recovering of about 320,000 barrels per day (bpd) of the Nigeria’s oil exports.
The two major trunk lines were earlier shut by the oil multinational some eight days ago. With their resumed operations, hope rises for the October export programme.
Multi national oil company we gathered is expected to export seven crude oil cargoes of 221,000 bpd (a total of about 6.85 million barrels) of Bonny Light in October.
These were contained in a statement from the Corporate Media Relations Manager, SPDC, Precious Okolobo, which reads: “SPDC operated Joint Venture today (September 2) lifted the force majeure on Bonny Light exports following the repair and re-opening of the Trans Niger Pipeline (TNP) and Nembe Creek Trunkline (NCTL.)
“The TNP was repaired after a joint investigation visit found that a leak was caused by an illegal connection that failed. A number of crude theft points were removed from the NCTL.”
Shell Joint Venture had declared force majeure on Bonny Light exports effective August 27, 2015, following the shutdown of both the Trans Niger Pipeline and Nembe Creek Trunkline .
The leak was discovered on the TNP at Oloma in Rivers State.
The Trans Niger Pipeline, according to Shell, transports around 180,000 barrels per day of crude oil to the Bonny Export Terminal and is part of the gas liquid evacuation infrastructure, critical for continued domestic power generation and liquefied gas exports.
-Emmanuel Ikechukwu
