(MarketWatch) — A Nigerian government official said Friday that a shut-in at the country’s oil rich Niger Delta is in fact 800,000 barrels a day and higher than previously reported.
Speaking at an industry event in Lagos, Tony Chukwueke, director of Nigeria’s Department of Petroleum Resources, said “as I speak to you now, Nigeria has shut in over 800,000 b/d. This is a huge loss to Nigeria and we don’t know what to do about it.”
Until now it was thought that attacks by the region’s militants, who are fighting for regional control of Nigeria’s oil resources, had cut the country’s crude oil output by more than 500,000 b/d, most of it from a joint venture operated by Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSB).
The major militant group – the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta – warned recently it was preparing for a major attack on the Nigerian oil industry.
Militants have also said they were aiming to cut Nigeria’s oil exports by 1 million b/d.
Nigeria, a member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, currently exports between 2.3 million and 2.4 million b/d.
Nigerian industry sources were unable to say why an extra 300,000 b/d of Nigerian production is offline than previously estimated. Although one Nigerian oil official said, “if Tony has made this comment there is no doubt it is correct.”
A spokeswoman for Shell in London was also unable to comment on the latest reported outage figure.
She confirmed that 455,000 b/d of Shell’s crude output remains shut-in in the western Delta following civil unrest there.
Unrelated, 50,000 b/d of Shell’s crude production remains out of action following an oil spill nearly two weeks ago in the company’s trunk line in Nembe in the Niger Delta.
The company’s gas plant in the eastern Niger Delta remains closed following an attack by armed men early Wednesday morning.
The Cawthorne Channel gas plant has capacity of 150 million cubic feet of gas a day.
Jun92006