Adedapo Adesanya
By Adedapo Adesanya
Oil exports from Shell Plc’s Forcados terminal in Nigeria are due to resume after a 10-week interruption, offering a boost to the government amid tumbling crude production this year.
Shipments are scheduled to restart following the completion of repair work at the coastal facility in the oil-rich Delta State.
The SPDC’s media relations manager, Mrs Abimbola Essien-Nelson, made the disclosure on Friday morning, noting that the Forcados Oil Terminal would resume export operations by the end of October when the repairs would have been completed.
The Forcados Export pipeline, which has the capacity to export over 400,000 barrels of crude per day, was vandalised by crude oil thieves.
The vandalism has hampered the functionality of the pipeline, thereby hindering the transportation of crude oil through the pipeline to the export terminal.
The Forcados Oil Pipeline System is the second largest network in the Niger Delta and transports oil, water and associated gas from fields in the western Delta to the Forcados oil terminal.
The Trans Forcados Pipeline (TFP) is the major trunk line, which feeds multiple branches from onshore fields.
At the Forcados River manifold, its capacity is 850,000 per day. Until 2012, the pipeline was operated by Shell.
According to Mrs Essien-Nelson, the active illegal connections to SPDC joint venture’s production lines and facilities in the western Niger Delta and the inactive illegal connection to the onshore section of the 48” Forcados Export Line are in the company’s ongoing programme.
She noted that the programme was to remove illegal connections on the pipelines that feed the terminal.
The Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited last month said it lost 470,000 barrels per day of crude oil, amounting to $700 million monthly, due to oil theft. This is telling on the nation’s oil wealth, which made it difficult for the country to reap the rewards after prices hit around $140 per barrel this year.
