Ike Amos
28 January 2016, Sweetcrude, Abuja — Independents and marginal fields’ operators in the Nigerian oil and gas industry produced 36.82 million barrels of crude oil and condensates in 10 months, between January and October 2015.
The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, in its monthly financial and operations for November 2015, explained that the independents and marginal fields’ operators were only able to account for 5.73 per cent of the total of 642.7 million barrels of crude oil produced in the 10-month period.
The unimpressive performance of the independents and marginal fields’ operators, who are mainly indigenous companies, was in spite of various attempts and initiatives by the Federal Government to improve their production capacity.
Giving a breakdown of their production capacity, the NNPC noted that in January 2015, the independents and marginal fields’ operators recorded 4.057 million barrels of crude oil production; February’s production was 4.139 million barrel; March’s production was 5.22 million barrels; April — 3.28 million barrels and May — 2.126 million barrels.
In June, July, August, September and October, the companies produced 3.372 million barrels, 4.36 million barrels, 2.24 million barrels, 4.024 million barrels and 3.997 million barrels respectively.
In addition, another indigenous firm, the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company, NPDC, recorded total crude oil production of 29.167 million in the 10-month period, accounting for 4.54 per cent of total crude oil production for the period.
A breakdown of NPDC’s production on a month-by-month basis showed between January and May, it produced2.591 million barrels, 3.177 million barrels, 3.692 million barrels, 1.182 million barrels and 3.419 million respectively, while for the months of June, July, August, September and October, it produced, 2.08 million barrels, 3.5 million barrels, 2.9 million barrels, 3.5 million and 3.15 million respectively.
Continuing, the report said, “The NPDC year-to-date (YTD) cumulative production from all fields amounted to 29,166,708 barrels of Crude oil which translated to an average daily production of 95,943 barrels. Comparing NPDC performance to National Production, the company production share amounted to 4.61 per cent. NPDC production is expected to hit production level of 250,000 barrels per day (bp/d) after the completion of the on-going NPDC re-kitting project.
“Production from NPDC wholly operated assets amounted to 8,732,540 barrels (or 30 per cent of the total production) with Okono Okpoho (OML 119) alone producing more than 79 per cent of the NPDC operated Assets or 24.08 per cent of the total NPDC production. Also on the NPDC operated JV assets, in which NPDC own 55 per cent controlling interest, crude oil production amounted to 11,985,250 (or 41 per cent of the NPDC total production). On the JV assets not operated by NPDC, production level stood at 8,448,918 barrels or 29 per cent of the company production.”
In the area of gas production, the report stated that for the period January to November 2015, a total of 2.656 trillion standard cubic feet was produced, representing an average daily production of 7.951 billion standard cubic feet per day during the period.
NPDC accounted for 8.22 per cent of total gas production in the 10-month period, with 219.51 billion standard cubic feet of gas.
In addition, production from Joint Ventures (JVs) and Production Sharing Contracts (PSC) contributed about 69.89 per cent and 21.88 per cent respectively to the total national gas production.
It also stated that a total of 247.22 billion standard cubic feet (BCF) of natural gas was produced in the month of November 2015 translating to an average daily production of 8.24 billion standard cubic feet per day (bscfd).