The Nigerian National Petroleum Company, NNPC, Ltd has today announced the introduction of Nembe Crude Oil Grade, an entirely new crude oil grade, into the global crude oil market. The announcement of the new is courtesy of Aiteo, Operator of the NNPC/Aiteo Oil Mining Lease, OML, 29 Joint Venture, JV, and was made at the ongoing Argus European Crude Conference in London on yesterday.
OML 29, an asset located onshore Nigeria, is currently being operated by Aiteo Eastern Exploration and Production Ltd, Africa’s leading indigenous hydrocarbon producer, following a historic acquisition of the oil well from Shell during year 2014.
Disclosing through a statement today by Olufemi Soneye, Chief Corporate Communications Officer, NNPC Ltd. said that the Nembe crude was before now use to be blended with the popular Bonny Light grade and exported via the Bonny Oil and Gas Terminal from Nigeria.
According to him, the unique selling point of the Nembe grade with an API gravity was made open by both the Aiteo E & P and NNPC Limited Leadership at the Argus Conference in London.
The statement partly reads; “The Nembe Crude Oil grade also has a low sulphur content and low carbon footprint due to flare gas elimination, fitting perfectly into the required spec of major buyers in Europe.
“Two cargoes of 950,000 barrels each of the Nembe Crude Oil grade have since been exported to France and the Netherlands.
“With its attractive Assay of API 29 and low sulphur content, the Nembe Crude Oil grade commands a premium to the global Brent benchmark.
The statement added, “With the NNPC-Aiteo OML 29 JV back onstream, Nigeria now boasts of an additional crude oil export of two Cargoes at 950,000 barrels each per month and 1.2 Bcf of export gas monthly.”
Mr Soneye revealed that the outstanding success signaled the commencement of activities at Nigeria’s newest crude oil terminal, the Nembe Crude Oil Export Terminal (NCOET), which was licensed in line with the extant laws and Crude Oil Terminal establishment regulations.
Explaining further, he said, terminal was earlier conceived as a Floating Storage and Offloading Vessel (FSO) with a storage capacity of two million barrels and the ability to offload crude oil to any export tanker from AFRAMAX to Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCC).
“It has a loading capacity of 25,000 barrels per hour and will be exporting over 3.6 million barrels of Crude oil monthly at full scale of operation.”
The NNPC spokesperson added, that currently, hydrocarbon production from OML 29, which was hitherto inhibited due to evacuation challenges of security hitches surrounding the Nembe Creek Trunk Line, NCTL, corridor, has been debottlenecked.
But it becomes a success through a collaborative effort and innovative approach by the company that led to the Crude Oil Evacuation Solution.
The Argus European Crude Conference 2023 in London is a gathering of energy key players in the oil and gas industry, refiners, NOCs, traders, financial institutions, and other representatives from the oil markets. NAN.
