An oil terminal has been shut down in the Niger Delta area after an attack caused a blast on the facility, and the operator of the terminal declared force majeure that will see crude production falling by 25,000 bpd at a time that Nigeria is struggling to pump to its OPEC+ quota.
Italian major Eni, the parent company of Nigerian Agip Oil Company (NAOC), declared force majeure on the expected oil production at the Brass Terminal on Monday.
“An incident occurred on the Ogoda/Brass 24 oil line at Okparatubo in Nembe Local Government Area of Bayelsa State. The incident was caused by a blast, consequently causing a spill,” Eni disclosed in a statement.
“All wells connected to that pipeline were immediately shut whilst river booms and containment barges were mobilised to reduce the impact of the spill,” the company added.
The blast was the result of an attack on the facility, according to Eni.
That was the second such attack on an oil infrastructure facility in Nigeria in three weeks, following a similar incident at Eni’s Obama flow station.
“Force Majeure has been declared at Brass terminal, Bonny NLNG and Okpai Power Plant,’’ according to a statement by Eni.
Nigeria, the largest OPEC producer in Africa, has been struggling for months to increase its oil production as much as its quota under the OPEC+ deal allows. Thus, Nigeria has been contributing to the tightening of the oil market together with the other OPEC+ producers who either lack the capacity or investments to raise output. Nigeria is also besieged by frequent oil theft, oil spills, and attacks on infrastructure, which further complicate production and discourage investments from the biggest oil firms in the country.
Nigeria’s quota under the OPEC+ agreement was 1.701 million bpd for February, but the country pumped 1.398 million bpd on average last month, according to OPEC’s secondary sources in the Monthly Oil Market Report (MOMR) for February.