Page 9 - AfrOil Week 37 2022

AfrOil PERFORMANCE AfrOil

Nigeria plummets in oil

production rankings

NIGERIA NIGERIA is no longer Africa’s largest oil pro- when a leak was found on a subsea hose at the
ducer, OPEC has reported, following a drop of terminal.
more than 100,000 barrels per day (bpd) com- Bonny and Forcados are key export points for
pared to July. Nigeria, and these developments are contribut-
The country has now dropped down to fourth ing to exports falling alongside production.
place, behind Angola, Algeria and Libya. Indeed, analytics firm Petro-Logistics said
August’s production of 980,000 bpd is around this week that Nigerian crude exports had fallen
half of OPEC’s Nigeria target for the month, and below 1mn bpd in August. This represents their
a sign that theft and sabotage have seriously lowest level on record, as well as almost a halving
affected the industry. According to the Nigerian compared with three years ago.
authorities, around 200,000 barrels of oil lost Nigeria’s economy once relied on oil as its
daily. backbone, but this year it was replaced by infor-
The scale of oil theft currently was described mation and communications technology as the
by a Shell executive as an existential threat to top contributor to GDP.
Nigeria in July. Then, in late August, Nigerian There are, however, positives in the Nigerian
National Petroleum Co.’s (NNPC) CEO, Melee oil market. On September 14, the Nigerian gov-
Kyari, said that around 95% of the crude output ernment revealed that the country’s biggest refin-
at Bonny, the country’s main oil hub, was being ery, Port Harcourt, would become functional by
lost. Meanwhile, the Forcados terminal remains December. The facility was closed in March 2019
offline, with repair works now set to carry on for repair works, which began only in 2021 after
until the end of September. Crude loadings at the country’s federal executive council approved
Forcados have been suspended since mid-July, $1.5bn for the project.™

POLICY

Energy-saving plan enables Egypt

to export additional LNG cargoes

EGYPT IMPLEMENTATION of an energy-saving plan $300mn per month while saving 15% will bring
to reduce electricity consumption since early in $450mn per month.
August has enabled Egypt to export two addi- Egypt stands to benefit from its proximity to
tional cargoes of LNG, generating much-needed Europe, which is pivoting away from imports of
foreign exchange, local media reported Minister Russian gas in the wake of the war in Ukraine.
of Petroleum Tarek El-Molla as saying. However, it is also attracting buyers from else-
The plan includes applying daylight-saving where amid a tight market. In mid-Septem-
time settings in malls, switching off lights on ber, South Korea was reported to have paid a
government building facades at night and after record price for an LNG cargo from Egypt at
official working hours, except for in the service $178mn, or $54.6 per million British thermal
sectors. It also includes reducing the lighting of units ($1,510.24 per 1,000 cubic metres), over
streets and squares, clubs, stadiums and sports the summer.
institutions, and standardising energy-saving There are concerns, though, that the influx of
LED lights in all stadiums and youth sports revenues from LNG exports will not be enough
clubs. for Egypt to help its struggling economy. In par-
The government’s plan seeks to save 15% of ticular, the country is facing high food and fuel
the natural gas used for electricity generation, import bills, and is under pressure to reduce sub-
exporting it instead to bring in more foreign sidies on both. Cairo is also currently in nego-
currency amid a global spike in the price of oil tiations with the International Monetary Fund
and basic goods. It estimates that a 10% saving (IMF) over a new loan, and analysts estimate that
of gas used for electricity generation and redi- Egypt would require at least $15bn to stabilise its
recting it for export will bring in approximately economy over the next three years.™

Week 37 15•September•2022 www. NEWSBASE .com P9