The national oil and gas company and its Utapate field partner Sterling Oil Exploration & Energy Production Co. Ltd. (SEEPCO), a local player, started exporting the light sweet crude July with 950,000 barrels sent to Spain, NNPC said in a statement.
Since we started producing the Utapate Field in May 2024, we have rapidly ramped up production to 40,000 barrels per day with minimum downtime, NNPC Exploration and Production Ltd. managing director Nicholas Foucart told the Argus European Crude Conference in London, as quoted by NNPC. So far, we have exported five cargoes, largely to Spain and the East Coast of the United States, while two more additional cargoes have been secured for November and December 2024, representing a significant boost to Nigeria’s crude oil export to the global market.
Produced in Oil Mining Lease (OML) 13 in Akwa Ibom state, Utapate crude is similar to the Nembe crude that Nigeria introduced late last year, according to NNPC. Utapate crude “has a low sulfur content of 0.0655 percent and low carbon footprint due to flare gas elimination, fitting perfectly into the required specification of major buyers in Europe, NNPC said.
OML 13 holds reserves of 330 million barrels of petroleum, 45 million barrels of condensate and 3.5 trillion cubic feet of gas, according to NNPC. Located onshore oil-rich Niger Delta, OML 13 spans 1,987 square kilometers (767.2 square miles), according to online information from the Nigeria Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission. The lease is owned by NNPC’s upstream arm and SEEPCO subsidiary Natural Oilfield Services Ltd.
We have a number of ongoing projects to increase our production from the current 40,000bopd [barrels of oil per day] to 50,000bopd by January 2025 and 60,000bopd to 65,000bopd by June 2025”, Foucart told the industry gathering. Essentially, we are targeting opportunities to increase production to 80,000bopd by the end of 2025.
The Utapate development converted swamp and marine wells and facilities to land-based operations. The developers drilled 40 wells and built a storage tank, a subsea pipeline and an offshore loading platform, according to NNPC.
The entry of the Utapate crude oil blend into the market is coming barely a year after the NNPC Ltd announced the launch of Nembe crude oil, produced by the NNPC/Aiteo operated Oil Mining Lease 29 Joint Venture, NNPC noted. The first Nembe crude cargoes were exported to France and the Netherlands, with 950,000 barrels each, NNPC told last year’s Argus European Crude Conference.
Nigeria’s hydrocarbon production ramped up to 1.8 million barrels a day (MMbd) of oil and 7.4 billion cubic feet per day of gas this month, with the possibility of crude production increasing to two MMbd by the end of 2024, NNPC reported November 14. The level grew from 1.43 MMbd last June.
Besides the Utapate field, the Madu field began production and the Awoba field restarted production recently. The latter two, also located in the Niger Delta, add a combined 32,000 bpd to Nigeria’s output capacity.
Madu is expected to average 20,000 bpd, NNPC said in a press release April 19. Meanwhile, Awoba restarted production at an initial rate of 8,000 bpd, expected to scale up to as much as 12,000 bpd within a few weeks, NNPC said April 23.
On September 9, NNPC said its joint venture with Chevron Corp. is targeting to reach production of 165,000 bpd by the end of 2024 after converting their licenses under the terms of the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA). NNPC and Chevron’s local arm Chevron Nigeria Ltd. expect the conversion to significantly boost crude oil production.
