Yemisi Izuora
Nigeria’s oil production is showing potential growth following new opportunities by firms operating in the country.
During the week oil and gas firm SacOil Holdings Ltd said its SacOil Energy Equity Resources Ltd joint venture has been awarded a crude oil term contract by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC.
The terms of the contract and regulatory of offtake by the SEER venture will be dependent on aggregate crude oil production in Nigeria, SacOil said.
“These crude trading operations represent an important part of SacOil’s diverse portfolio of assets and operations, and are in line with the company’s strategy to focus on cash generative, income producing activities across the full industry value chain,” SacOil said in a statement.
Similarly, San Leon Energy Plc, said that reperforation operations carried out at wells in Oil Mining Lease, OML, 18 located in onshore Nigeria, helped to raise production to about 61,000 barrels of oil per day (bpd).
The increase in production is expected to boost Nigeria’s output.
The company said, “The well has now been temporarily shut in to allow minor production upgrades and additional workover operations.
The reperforation programme will continue to be implemented across a number of wells in this field in the coming months.”
Elsewhere, San Leon said it was expecting new production from at least two other Nigerian oil prospects during the first half of this year.
Nigeria is exempted from an agreement by the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC, to cut production this month because of militant attacks on its oil sector.
The managed decline is aimed at bringing the market back to a reasonable balance between supply and demand. An oversupplied market pushed crude oil prices below $30 per barrel in early 2016.
Nigeria’s oil sector is the target of militants operating in the Niger Delta which hit oil infrastructure to press for more ownership of the sector.
Nigeria reported to OPEC that its crude oil production in November was near 1.8 million bpd, a 28 percent increase from the previous month.
The company recently provided an update on operations and cash flow receipts related to its initial indirect 9.72 per cent interest in the OML 18 project, onshore Nigeria.
The electric line operations have now acquired water saturation logs within a group of wells, and perforation of new producing intervals has commenced based upon that data.