Page 8 - DMEA Week 31 2021

DMEA PIPELINES DMEA

Nigerien oil minister says NBEP

project is moving forward

AFRICA NIGER’S Oil Minister Sani Mahamadou said of China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC).
late last month that his country was making pro- The latter company is the operator of the Aga-
gress in its campaign to establish a new export dem basin fields that will provide throughput for
route linking oilfields in the Agadem basin to the the line.
coast of Benin. The conduit will be able to pump 100,000 bar-
Speaking during a tour of the country’s oil rels per day of oil, enough to raise Niger’s total
installations, Mahamadou noted that work on crude production up from the current level of
the Niger-Benin Export Pipeline (NBEP) had about 20,000 bpd to 120,000 bpd.
continued to move forward since construction CNPC had previously talked about exporting
operations began in June. The project “is well Nigerien crude via Chad and Cameroon, along
advanced, with 70 km of land already made a route that would have allowed it to take advan-
available for the laying and welding of the pipes,” tage of an oil transportation corridor established
he commented. for its fields in southern Chad. However, it later
The minister did not say when he expected abandoned this plan and opted to build NBEP
NBEP, which will follow a 1,982-km route from instead, signing a transportation agreement with
the Agadem oilfield to Benin’s Sèmè-Kraké ter- the governments of Niger and Benin in Septem-
minal on the Atlantic coast, to be completed. ber 2019.
According to other sources, though, the pipe is The planned pipeline will also deliver crude
due to come on stream in 2024. The cost of con- oil from the Agadem field to the Zinder refin-
struction has been estimated at $7bn. ery in Niger. This plant, which is capable of pro-
NBEP is being built by China Petroleum cessing some 20,000 bpd of crude, was built by a
Pipeline Engineering Co. Ltd (CPP), a subsidiary CNPC-led joint venture.™

P8 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 31 05•August•2021