Nigeria’s oil exports are predicted to drop in July to around 1.43 million barrels per day. According to reports by Reuters, loading plans for the month of July has dropped to its lowest so far this year.
The export plan consists of 48 cargoes compared to 60 cargoes and a daily level of 1.79 million barrel per day in June.
This drop in volume has been attributed to the shutdown of the Bonny Light stream which has been declared a force majeure for a month.
Recall that Shell had recently declared a force majeure on exports of Bonny Light Crude.
A Force majeure is a legal clause that allows companies to cancel or delay deliveries due to unforeseen circumstances.
Prior to the declaration of force majeure on Bonny Light exports, the nation’s crude shipments were already witnessing delays following a leak on the 200,000 to 240,000 bpd Trans-Forcados pipeline that shut down thus effectively cutting deliveries of Forcados, the country’s largest crude grade.
The July export plans also have four cargoes of Akpo condensate with 123,000 bpd as against 133,000 bpd recorded in June.
There are also reports that Nigeria’s crude oil exports are under pressure as the United States is flooding Europe market with a large volume of crude.
The U.S. crude oil production has surged above 10 million barrels per day for the first period in more than four decades as new drilling and production techniques have provided access to billions of barrels of recoverable U.S. oil in shale rock formations. This has reversed decades of declining output and turned the country into a net exporter.
