The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Ltd. has announced the introduction of Nembe crude oil grade, a new crude oil grade, into the international crude oil market.
The announcement of the Nembe crude blend produced by Aiteo, the operator of the NNPC/Aiteo Oil Mining Lease 29 Joint Venture (JV), was made at the ongoing Argus European crude conference in London on Tuesday.
OML 29, an asset located onshore in Nigeria, is operated by Aiteo Eastern Exploration and Production Ltd., Africa’s leading indigenous hydrocarbon producer, following a historic acquisition from Shell in 2014.
A statement on Wednesday by the Chief Corporate Communications Officer, NNPC Ltd. Olufemi Soneye, said that the Nembe crude was previously blended with the popular Bonny light grade and exported via the Bonny Oil and Gas Terminal.
Mr Soneye said the unique selling point of the Nembe grade with API gravity was highlighted by both Aiteo E & P and NNPC Limited Leadership at the Argus conference in London.
“The Nembe crude oil grade also has low sulphur content and low carbon footprint due to flare gas elimination, fitting perfectly into the requirements 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.
“With the NNPC-Aiteo OML 29 JV back on stream, 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,” he said.
Mr Soneye said this remarkable achievement signalled the commencement of activities at Nigeria’s newest crude oil terminal, the Nembe Crude Oil Export Terminal, which was licensed in line with the existing laws and crude oil terminal establishment regulations.
He further said the terminal was conceived as a floating storage and offloading vessel 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.
“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,” he added.
Mr Soneye said that currently, hydrocarbon production from OML 29, which was hitherto constrained due to evacuation challenges owing to the security issues around the Nembe Creek Trunk Line corridor, had been debottlenecked.
This, he said, was through a collaborative and creative approach that led to the innovation of the Alternative Crude Oil Evacuation Solution.
The Argus European Crude Conference 2023 in London is a gathering of energy majors, refiners, NOCs, traders, financial institutions, and other representatives from across the global oil markets.