Eni Lifts Force Majeure on Nigeria's Brass River Crude Exports
LONDON (Reuters) - Italy's oil major Eni said it was lifting force majeure on Nigeria's Brass River crude oil exports on Wednesday after pipelines had been repaired following sabotage.
Eni declared force majeure on the crude grade on Nov. 22 after two pipelines were hit with "explosive devices".
An explosion hit pipelines at Shell and Eni oilfields in Nigeria's Niger Delta, resulting in a leak, a community leader said after the incident.
Nigeria is the world's eighth biggest exporter of crude oil, but a sizeable proportion of its output is stolen by thieves who either drill into pipelines or hijack barges loaded with oil, theft that is known locally as "bunkering".
Oil and gas operations in Nigeria have been hampered for years by bunkering and militant attacks on pipelines, although crude oil production largely recovered after a cessation of hostilities in 2017 by Niger Delta militants, but pipelines and other facilities have still been the target of sporadic attacks and illegal taps.
Last month, a Nigerian court sentenced six foreigners and one Nigerian to seven years in prison for oil theft, three years after the navy arrested 10 suspects with a vessel carrying crude oil off the Niger Delta. They had siphoned about two thousand metric tonnes of crude oil from a loading facility belonging to Shell Petroleum in 2017.
In 2016, ExxonMobil declared force majeure after militants bombed the 300,000-bpd Qua Iboe export terminal, and Shell had to shut its 180,000-bpd Trans-Niger Pipeline and 400,000-bpd Forcados terminal after separate pipeline attacks. Hundreds of foreign and local oil workers were evacuated that year because of death threats by a group calling itself the Niger Delta Avengers, which sought to stop all oil exports.
Eni has had a presence in Nigeria since 1962, when the Nigerian Agip Oil Co. Ltd (NAOC) was founded.
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