Effect of ongoing nationwide strike by the oil workers was recorded on Thursday in Abuja as long queues by motorists for petrol were seen at many filling stations in the Continue Reading
The Minister of Labour and Productivity, Chief Emeka Wogu, on Thursday in Abuja urged Nigerians not to panic over the current fuel scarcity in the country. Wogu made the call Continue Reading
Eni SPA has made an oil discovery on Block 15/06 in the Ochigufu exploration prospect offshore Angola. It is the 10th commercial oil discovery for the block, and is estimated to hold 300 million bbl of oil in place. The Ochigufu 1 NFW well was directionally drilled by the Ocean Rig Poseidon drilling unit in 1,337 m of water, reaching a total depth of 4,470 m. Eni says it found 47 m of proved net oil pay of 34° gravity in the Lower Miocene and Oligocene sandstones. Data acquired in Ochigufu 1 indicate a production capacity of more than 5,000 b/d of oil. Studies are under way to evaluate an early tie-in to the 100,000-b/d Ngoma floating production, storage, and offloading vessel that lies in the nearby West Hub oil development project, which would enable Ochigufu 1 to be “brought into production in record time,” the company says. Separately, […]
Workers at Nigerian National Petroleum Corp., the country’s state-owned oil company, began an indefinite strike that may disrupt crude output from Africa ’s top producer and affect its domestic gasoline supplies, a union official said. “We have total shutdown at NNPC offices and all their subsidiaries, and that may affect the exports,” Babatunde Oke, a Lagos-based spokesman for both a managers’ union and a blue-collar workers’ union, said by phone today. “The refinery workers are also not working.” Staff operating flow stations that pump crude to export terminals are joining the action, meaning a protracted strike could disrupt cargoes, Oke said. Domestic gasoline supplies may also fall short as the workers protest pension terms at NNPC, he said. Union leaders should “exercise restraint,” the state-owned company said in a statement. Measures have been taken to reduce the pensions’ deficit to 85 billion naira ($520 million) currently from 298 billion […]
Nigeria is considering offers of more than $20 billion for the assets of its national electricity transmission company as it struggles to provide adequate power to Africa ’s largest economy, Power Minister Chinedu Nebo said. The sale of state-owned Transmission Co. of Nigeria may start “in a few years,” Nebo said in a Sept. 12 interview with Bloomberg Television Africa in Abuja, the capital. The government will also focus on developing renewable energy projects to diversify its supply of electricity, he said. “The interest now for transmission is over $20 billion,” he said on Sept. 12. “People are coming from everywhere.” Transmission is the only segment of the power industry that the government still controls as it seeks to curb regular blackouts in Africa’s largest oil producer. The country generates about a 10th of the power that South Africa does even though its population of about 170 million is […]
Lagos (Platts)–16Sep2014/524 am EDT/924 GMT Oil workers in Nigeria started an indefinite strike Tuesday that could disrupt oil production and exports from the OPEC member, said officials of the unions and state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corp. The unions took the action after failing to resolve a dispute over pensions and other issues. "Today, we have called our members out to begin an indefinite strike until management addresses our demand for a complete overhaul of the NNPC pension scheme, which in its present form is depriving our members of their full dues," a spokesman for the NNPC branch of Nupeng and Pengassan oil workers’ unions told Platts. NNPC’s headquarters in Abuja has been shut to workers and visitors, the union official said. Platts could not immediately confirm the situation in other NNPC offices, particularly in the oil-producing Niger Delta region. The union spokesman said that if NNPC management failed to […]
London (Platts)–12Sep2014/909 am EDT/1309 GMT Nigerian October crude cargoes are selling very slowly due to tepid demand caused by an oversupply of light sweet crudes, trading sources said Friday. There was almost half of the October program or 30 odd cargoes still available which, sources said, was very long for this point in the trading cycle. "The structure is at a contango of 80 cents and differentials are correcting. Nigerian crudes have been slow to sell, despite better refining margins, as the Atlantic Basin was awash with material, especially light sweet crudes," a trader said. Sources said Nigerian crudes had been slow to sell despite better refining margins as the Atlantic Basin was inundated with too many crudes especially light sweet crudes. Article continues below… Crude Oil Marketwire delivers vital intelligence to help you make critical decisions. Delivered daily direct to your desktop, Crude Oil Marketwire provides detailed market […]
press release Nigeria is facing its worst oil crisis in years, as the country is losing billions of dollars due to theft. In Southern Ijaw in Bayelsa State, Al Jazeera’s Rawya Rageh follows an oil theft arrest and the destruction of multiple illegal refineries for stolen crude. "Despite these efforts, oil theft in Nigeria is at its highest levels in five years since the government gave amnesty to former rebels in the area," she says. "The government says eight billion dollars in revenue were lost in ‘industrial-scale’ theft last year and multinational oil giants have started reducing their on-shore presence here, selling off fields as a result of the theft." She also speaks to illegal oil workers, who say they have no other potential form of income, and to activist Nengi James, who blames the government for not doing enough to secure the pipeline infrastructure and prosecute suspects. "Despite […]
Nigeria’s public treasury has continued to bleed as stakeholders trade blame over who is stealing oil in the country and what quantity is actually stolen. Oilprice.com, an online publication, reported last year that Nigeria was losing an estimated 400,000 barrels per day, citing figures attributed to Nigeria’s coordinating minister for the economy and finance minister, Mrs Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. The large volume of oil allegedly stolen on a daily basis last year was equivalent to a revenue loss of about $1.7 billion a month and $20.4 billion annually. This earned Africa’s largest economy the No. 1 position among countries most plagued by oil theft in the world ahead of Mexico, Iraq, Russia, and Indonesia. The amount lost by Nigeria annually was reported to be more than the country spent on education and healthcare combined. According to data provided by the chief of naval staff last week, daily oil theft in […]
Ghana will double crude production by 2017 as offshore deposits being developed by Tullow Oil Plc and Eni SpA start producing oil, Minister of Energy Emmanuel Armah-Kofi Buah said. Tullow’s TEN development will produce about 80,000 barrels a day by then, the minister said by phone today. Eni’s Sankofa Gye-Nyame deposit will pump 50,000 barrels, he said. Production at Ghana’s Jubilee field will rise to 120,000 barrels from 110,000 today. Ghana and partners Tullow and Anadarko Petroleum Corp. plan to invest $20 billion in the next 10 years to develop offshore oil deposits. The world’s second-largest cocoa producer needs revenue to help narrow its budget deficit, which will probably exceed 10 percent of gross domestic product for a third year, according to Fitch Ratings and Moody’s Investors Service. To contact the reporter on this story: Ekow Dontoh in Accra at [email protected] To contact the editors responsible for this story: […]
