Nigeria Introduces Nembe Crude Oil Grade to International Market

By Adedapo Adesanya

The Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited and Aiteo Joint Venture have announced the introduction of Nembe crude oil grade, a new crude oil grade into the international crude oil market.

This was disclosed in a statement signed by Mr Olufemi Soneye, the Chief Corporate Communications Officer (CCCO), of the state oil company on Wednesday.

The NNPC said two cargoes of 950,000 barrels each of the Nembe crude oil grade have since been exported to France and the Netherlands.

The Nembe crude oil blend, produced by Aiteo, the operator of the NNPC/Aiteo Oil Mining Lease (OML) 29 Joint Venture (JV), was made at the ongoing Argus European crude conference in London, on Tuesday.

OML 29, an asset located onshore Nigeria, is operated by Aiteo Eastern Exploration & Production Limited, Africa’s leading indigenous hydrocarbon producer, following its acquisition from Shell in 2014.

“The Nembe crude was previously blended with the popular Bonny Light grade and exported via the Bonny oil & gas terminal.

“The unique selling point of the Nembe crude oil grade with an API gravity was highlighted by both the Aiteo E & P and NNPC Limited Leadership at the Argus conference in London,” the statement said.

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.

“With the NNPC-Aiteo OML 29 JV back onstream, Nigeria now boasts of an additional crude oil export of 2 Cargoes at 950,000 barrels each per month and 1.2 Bcf of export gas monthly,” the statement added.

The NNPC noted that this remarkable achievement signals 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.

“The terminal was conceived as a Floating Storage and Offloading Vessel (FSO) with a storage capacity of two (2) 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 statement said.