NNPC/Aiteo JV launches Nembe Crude grade

Ben Eguzozie

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.

The Nembe Crude Oil Blend, produced by Aiteo, the operator of the NNPC/Aiteo Oil Mining Lease (OML) 29 Joint Venture (JV), was announced at the ongoing Argus European Crude Conference in London, a gathering of energy majors, refiners, NOCs, traders, financial institutions, and other representatives from across the global oil markets.

OML 29, an asset located onshore 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 Oil grade might just quickly join the globally reputable crude oil grades like the UK London Brent and Nigeria’s Bonny Light, among others.

According to McKinsey’s Energy Insights, crude oil comes in hundreds of different varieties or grades. These grades are valued differently by refiners based on their crude qualities.

These qualities also affect their price assessments. For example, London Brent is the leading global price benchmark for Atlantic basin crude oils. Whereas Bonny Light is an important benchmark crude for all West African crude production.

The Brent Crude oil marker, also known as Brent Blend, London Brent and Brent petroleum. This grade is described as light because of its relatively low density, and sweet because of its low sulphur content.

The Bonny Light is a light-sweet crude oil grade produced in Nigeria. It has particularly good gasoline yields, which has made it a popular crude for US refiners, particularly on the US East Coast, McKinsey Energy Insights said.

The Nembe Crude was previously blended with the popular Bonny Light grade and exported via the Bonny Oil & Gas Terminal. The unique selling point of the Nembe Crude Oil grade with an API gravity was highlighted by both the Aiteo E&P and NNPC Limited leadership at the Argus Conference in London.

Like the Bonny Light crude blend, 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 grade commands a premium to the global Brent benchmark.

With the NNPC-Aiteo OML 29 JV back onstream, Nigeria now has an additional crude oil export of two cargoes at 950,000 barrels each per month and 1.2 billion cubic feet (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 licensed 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 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.

Currently, hydrocarbon production from OML 29, which was hitherto constrained due to evacuation challenges owing to the security issues around the Nembe Creek Trunk Line (NCTL) corridor, has now been debottlenecked through a collaborative and creative approach that led to the innovation of the Alternative Crude Oil Evacuation Solution (ACOES).

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.