NNPC/Aiteo Joint Venture Launches Nembe Crude Oil Grade

The NNPC/Aiteo Joint Venture has announced the introduction of Nembe Crude Oil Grade, a new crude oil grade, into the international crude oil market.

Olufemi Soneye, the Chief Corporate Communications Officer of NNPCL, said that Aiteo, the company in charge of the NNPC/Aiteo Oil Mining Lease (OML) 29 Joint Venture (JV), announced the Nembe Crude Oil Blend on Tuesday at the Argus European Crude Conference, which is currently taking place in London.

OML 29, an asset located onshore in Nigeria, is operated by Aiteo Eastern Exploration & Production Ltd., Africa’s leading indigenous hydrocarbon producer, following a historic acquisition from Shell in 2014.

The Nembe Crude was previously blended with the popular Bonny Light grade and exported via the Bonny Oil & Gas Terminal.

At the Argus Conference in London, Aiteo E & P and NNPC Limited Leadership both highlighted the distinctive selling point of the Nembe crude oil grade with an API gravity.

The Nembe Crude Oil grade also has a low sulphur content and low carbon footprint due to flare gas elimination, fitting perfectly into the required spec of major buyers in Europe.

Two cargoes of 950,000 barrels each of the Nembe crude oil grade have since been exported to France and the Netherlands. With its attractive Assay of API 29 and low sulphur content, the Nembe crude oil grade commands a premium to the global Brent benchmark.

With the NNPC-Aiteo OML 29 JV back on stream, Nigeria now boasts an additional crude oil export of 2 cargoes at 950,000 barrels per month and 1.2 BCF of export gas monthly.

This remarkable achievement signals the commencement of activities at Nigeria’s newest crude oil terminal, the Nembe Crude Oil Export Terminal (NCOET), which was licenced in line with the extant laws and Crude Oil Terminal establishment regulations.

The terminal was conceived as a Floating Storage and Offloading Vessel (FSO) with a storage capacity of two (2) million barrels and the ability to offload crude oil to any export tanker from AFRAMAX to Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCC).

It has a loading capacity of 25,000 barrels per hour and will be exporting over 3.6 million barrels of crude oil monthly at full scale of operation.

As of now, the Alternative Crude Oil Evacuation Solution has been created, which has made it possible for hydrocarbon production from OML 29 to resume. This was previously limited because of security concerns along the Nembe Creek Trunk Line (NCTL) corridor, which made it hard to evacuate.

The Argus European Crude Conference 2023 in London is a gathering of energy majors, refiners, NOCs, traders, financial institutions, and other representatives from across the global oil markets. The event also provides a critical opportunity for business leaders to connect, discuss, share, and learn from one another.