Royal Dutch Shell on Tuesday announced the shutdown of Bonga floating Production Storage and Offloading unit (FPSO).
Shell Nigeria Exploration and Production Company (SNEPco), a subsidiary of Shell in Nigeria, currently operates the FPSO on its offshore field, located in the Oil Mining Lease (OML) 118.
The shut-in, SNEPCo said in an email, was buoyed by the shutdown of Bonga crude oil export terminal for routine maintenance, with the aim to have the work done “record time.”
The maintenance on the Bonga floating production storage and offloading unit (FPSO), the oil super major said, began on May 21, five days ago.
Bonga was scheduled to load four cargoes in June, or 127,000 barrels per day (bpd), up slightly from May at 123,000 bpd.
The 127, 000 barrels shut-in on May 21, amounted to 635,000 barrels in five days.
Nigeria is currently facing acute dollar shortage due to the plunge in global oil prices and the sharp decline in revenue expectations from crude oil exports.
The federal executive council approved a revised spending estimate for the year, which reduced the total budget down to N10.52 trillion from N10.59 trillion initially approved by the National Assembly and signed by the president late last year.
The government has slashed expected revenue from oil export and increase the ratio of borrowing from both local and external source to plug the increase deficit in the new spending estimate being proposed for the approval of the National Assembly.
Meanwhile, Shell is reportedly planning on developing another field called Bonga South West at OML 118 block. This is expected to gulp about $10 billion and add 200,000 barrels per day (bpd), which will be roughly 10% of Nigeria’s current oil production.
