Business News
Nigeria’s crude oil export suffers due to force majeure declared by Shell, others
Nigerian Crude oil exports is suffering an interruption as a result of the force majeure declared on the Bonny Light and Amenam by Shell and Total.
Nigeria’s exportation of crude oil has recently been experiencing severe disruption, due to force majeure declared by two of the biggest oil exploration companies in the country.
The oil companies – Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) and French oil major, Total, both recently declared force majeure on Nigeria’s Bonny Light and Amenam grades of crude oil.
Why the force majeure?: Shell, yesterday, said that it declared force majeure on exports of Nigeria’s Bonny Light crude on the 25th of April, following the closure of one of two export pipelines, the Nembe Creek Trunk Line (NCTL).
Reason for the closure: Nairametrics had earlier reported that the Bonny Light-exporting Nembe Creek Trunk Line (NCTL) was shutdown by the Aiteo Eastern Exploration and Production Company Limited, on the 21st of April, as a result of a fire outbreak, which led to the decrease of the daily ouput of crude oil to 150,000 barrels per day.
The Nigerian military have confirmed that six people whom they suspected might have been the ones that started the fire, were all consumed by the inferno.
Bonny light’s initial contract was 222,000 bpd: Bonny light’s initial contract was to supply about 222,000 barrels of crude oil per day in June and 184,000 bpd in May.
Bonny light has been down this road before: This is not the first time a force majeure has been declared on Bonny light. On the 14th of August 2017, the crude was also affected due to issues over a leak on the Nembe Creek Trunk pipeline.
Shutdown of oil-wells prompted the force majeure on Amenam – The shutdown of Amenam’s oil-wells, reduced its crude oil daily production of 100,000 barrels per day, and delayed loading by 25 days. This led to Total‘s declaration of force majeure on it.
What is a force majeure?: A Force Majeure which is French for “superior force” is a contract provision that allows a party to suspend or terminate the performance of its obligations when certain circumstances beyond their control arise, making performance inadvisable, commercially impracticable, illegal, or impossible.
The provision may state that the contract is temporarily suspended, or that it is terminated if the event of force majeure continues for a prescribed period of time.
Profiles
Atsu Davoh is building ways for Africans to easily acquire and spend cryptocurrency
Atsu Davoh has gone from failed projects to running one of Ghana’s most innovative startups.
In recent times, the tech space in Africa has experienced immense growth, with the introduction of several key players and disruptors across various sectors. One sector that is also rising is the cryptocurrency space with Africa experiencing greater crypto ownership and trade volume.
The number of Bitcoins processed on a single day reached its highest value at the beginning of 2021, as more people displayed interest in the cryptocurrency. Due to its fast adoption, more fintech players have created platforms that have made trading with cryptocurrency easier. One of such players is Atsu Davoh who calls himself the “product guy.”
Atsu Davoh dropped out of college (Carleton College) in the United States and moved back to Ghana to help innovate on Africa’s financial infrastructure. Atsu first discovered Bitcoin in 2017 during the first boom when it became mainstream. Before then, he and his co-founder Samuel Baohen had been involved in many failed projects.
He developed a USSD system where people could buy bitcoin through their phone numbers, like tying crypto to phone numbers in a native way. This was one of the first iterations of Bitsika.
Atsu was invited to Join Binance Labs Incubator by Yele Bademosi where he got $150,000 after graduating from the incubator. Bitsika went on to raise around $900,000 from investors. This brought the total seed raised to $1,050,000.
This USSD system worked in Ghana but didn’t work in Nigeria. Atsu and his team then pivoted the platform to a donation crowdfunding platform, which allowed people living in other countries to send donations to African nationals in need of the funds before finally building it into a cross-border crypto remittance platform.
Bitsika users can deposit and remit money across multiple currencies using the app, with all monies deposited in Bitsika stored in USD credits or stable-coin.
Bitsika has over 50,000+ downloads on Playstore and processed nearly $40 million in 2020 with $18,872,474 in deposits, $17,890,807 in payouts (withdrawals), and $3,189,834 in internal peer-to-peer transfers.
Despite a few unfavourable regulations surrounding cryptocurrency in Africa, the market has shown no signs of slowing down as more people are building products that will make trading seamless.
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