GLOBAL OFFSHORE UPDATE

Top Business mogul Emperor Chris Baywood Ibe ( CEO of Tropical Arctic Logistics Limited) recently launched a new helicopter named ‘Chinenyeze’. The helicopter arrived Muritala Mohammed International Airport on May 29, 2018.

Consortium has awarded FES International two contracts to supply its CALM buoy swivels. The swivel technology is said to allow the buoy to rotate fully while maintaining a leak-free joint between the subsea pipelines and vessel, during transfers of fluids such as oil, LPG, and water.

The Nigerian Navy in Port Harcourt says it has discovered a massive illegal bunkering depot which served as a dump site and transit point for illegally refined petroleum products.

When OPEC exempted Nigeria from its plan to cut oil output for the first time in eight years, it highlighted how far Africa’s biggest producer has fallen. From January to October, just over three wells a month were drilled in Nigeria, down from a monthly average of almost 22 in 2006, according to petroleum ministry data. While output rebounded to 2.1 MMbpd from the 27-year low in August, that’s just half the government’s goal at the start of the millennium.

OPEC is on course to finalize the details of the Algiers accord to cut oil production at a meeting in Vienna on Tuesday, said a delegate from Nigeria. "There is certainty that everybody is on board,” Ibrahim Waya told reporters on his way into a meeting at the secretariat of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. “Everyone knows that the stakes are high."

Nigeria reached a $5.1-billion settlement to reimburse foreign oil companies, including Exxon Mobil Corp. and Royal Dutch Shell Plc for past operating costs. The amount, less than the $6.8 billion previously discussed, will be settled through crude-oil sales over five years and will be interest free, Petroleum Minister Emmanuel Kachikwu told reporters in the capital, Abuja, Thursday.

Nigeria and Libya, two crude suppliers in OPEC whose output was crushed by domestic conflicts this year, are ramping up again and spelling out what could become the producer club’s biggest challenge as it grapples with a global supply glut. Libya shipped the most oil since late 2014 in October, while Nigeria’s petroleum minister estimated on Tuesday that his country is now pumping in excess of 2 MMbpd for the first time since the start of the year. Together, they’ve now added about 800,000 bopd since September. “The pain for OPEC to reach the planned target level will get bigger and bigger as long as Nigeria and Libya continue to increase production,” said Giovanni Staunovo, commodity analyst at UBS Group in Zurich. The organization is “talking about cuts but so far what we have seen is a production increase.” Libya and Nigeria are among producers that matter most in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries’ quest to limit a global glut because conflicts in both natio...

OPEC's oil output is likely to set another record high in October, a Reuters survey found on Monday, as Nigerian and Libyan output partially recovered from disruptions and Iraq boosted exports. The rise in output could add to scepticism about OPEC's ability to finalize a plan agreed in September to limit supplies. Oil, which rallied to a 2016 high near $54 a barrel following the decision, has since slipped toward $48. Supply from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries has risen to 33.82 million barrels per day (bpd) in October from a revised 33.69 million bpd in September, according to the survey based on shipping data and information from industry sources. That would be 820,000 bpd above the top end of a target output range OPEC agreed to adopt at a Sept. 28 meeting. According to analysts, production near 34 million bpd would prolong the supply surplus weighing on the market. "With OPEC production creeping up toward 34 million barrels a day, a ...

There has been mass sack of over 3,000 workers in Nigeria’s oil industry as the country’s economic recession bites harder, two unions have said. The two major unions in the oil and gas sector, NUPENG and PENGASSAN, have thus threatened to go on strike saying over 3,000 of their members were affected. The unions on Wednesday issued a 21-day ultimatum to the federal government calling for a halt to the sack of their members by international oil companies in Nigeria. The National President of NUPENG, Igwe Achese, who addressed the media at the end of the Central Working Committee, CWC, meeting of the union in Effurun, Delta State, said government must do something urgently to stop the mass retrenchment of its members to avoid grounding the industry. Mr. Achese disclosed that most of the companies – Chevron Nigeria Limited, ExxonMobil, Pan Ocean, Sapiem, and Hercules oil and gas limited, among others – have terminated the appointment of over 3,000 of their workers apparently ove...

Royal Dutch Shell has resumed crude oil exports from the forcados terminal. This follows the restoration of the damaged facilities by Niger-Delta militants in the south-south region of the country. The development was communicated to the presidency by the Director of Global Upstream of Shell, Andrew Brown. Forcados crude has been under force majeure from operator, Shell, since a militant attack on the sub-sea pipeline in February. Exports from the terminal was between 250,000 and 300, 000 barrels per day before the strike claimed by militant group, Niger Delta Avengers. Meanwhile, the militant group at about 4am on Wednesday reportedly blew up a Chevron offshore export pipeline at Escravos in Delta State.

A Nigerian militant group claimed an attack on Thursday on a crude pipeline operated by state oil firm NNPC in the Niger Delta. Attacks on Nigeria's energy facilities by groups calling for the Delta region to receive a greater share of the OPEC member's oil wealth have cut crude production, which stood at 2.1 million barrels per day at the start of the year, by a third. The Niger Delta Greenland Justice Mandate said it bombed the Unenurhie-Evwreni delivery line in Ughelli, Delta state, at around 01:00 a.m. (0000 GMT) on Thursday. The line is operated by NPDC, a subsidiary of NNPC. A military source said dynamite was used to blow up the pipeline. An NNPC spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment. It comes days after Niger Delta Avengers, which has claimed responsibility for most of the attacks on energy facilities in the region since the start of the year, said it carried out its first attack since declaring a break in hostilities in August to ...

Facing the likelihood of its first full-year economic contraction in 25 years, Nigeria is contemplating a rare sale of stakes in the oil and gas industry, the country’s biggest foreign-exchange earner. President Muhammadu Buhari’s economic advisers are working on a plan “to generate immediate large injection of funds into the economy through asset sales, advance payment for license rounds, infrastructure concessioning,” to help deal with the slump in crude revenue, Budget Minister Udoma Udo Udoma said in a Sept. 24 statement. The ministry of Petroleum Resources is examining what energy assets could be sold, Udoma’s spokesman, James Akpandem, said last week. Battered by low oil prices and a dearth of foreign investment, Nigeria’s economy will probably shrink in 2016 for the first time in 25 years, according to the International Monetary Fund, which forecasts a 1.8% contraction. A 15-month currency peg, fuel and power shortages and a slump in crude production, have cut output. ...

A Nigerian court will next week begins hearing two suits instituted by government to recover a total of $635m from two multinational oil companies, Total and Agip as the cost of the difference between the amount of crude oil the companies lifted and the quantity they declared. In the two cases to be presided over by Justice Olatoregun Isola, Nigeria is asking Total E&P and Nigeria Agip Oil Company to pay the sum of $490,517,280 and $145,848,102 respectively as costs of undeclared or under-declared crude oil they exported from Nigeria. In the statement of claim filed before the court accompanied by the sworn affidavit of three United States of America, USA based professionals, the Federal Government of Nigeria alleged that sometime in 2014, it realised there was a decline in the revenue derived by it from the exportation of crude oil. This, the government said, necessitated an intelligent based gathering of data, which showed that part of the major reasons for the decline ...

DATA obtained from the United States, US, Energy Information Administration, EIA, has put the continued decline of employment in the oil and natural gas production across the world at 26 percent between 2014 and 2016.  The report, which captured between October 2014 and May 2016, stated that employment in oil and gas production reached a hight of 538,000 jobs in October 2014, but since then had declined by 26 percent, a loss of more than 142,000 jobs. It will be recalled that in Nigeria, there had been alarming rate of job cuts in the petroleum sector over the downturn in crude oil price at the International market and the attacks on oil facilities in the Niger Delta region. As a result, the operations and earnings of oil companies dropped sharply, as recent report by the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, puts the country’s daily crude production losses at 500,000 barrels per day, with production averaging 1.4 million barrels per day, mb/d as against the 1.9m...