Nigeria’s oil exports are on track to edge lower on a barrel-per-day basis in March, a survey of loading plans has shown.
Crude oil exports of 1.694 million barrels per day are scheduled for March on 62 cargoes.
While several loading plans for small grades are outstanding, the March total is likely to remain below the exports set at 1.843 million bpd in February, the plans showed.
Still, overall volumes will edge higher over the course of the longer month, Reuters report on Friday.
March exports will add up to at least 52.5 million barrels, above February’s level of 51.6 million barrels.
Nigeria’s production has remained broadly stable in recent months, with no major militant attacks since January last year.
But tensions remained high in the oil-rich Niger Delta, and the most destructive militant group in recent years, the Niger Delta Avengers, threatened to attack certain offshore fields in the coming days.
The group, whose 2016 attacks on the Forcados subsea pipeline shut the export terminal down for more than a year, specifically threatened the Bonga Platform and the Agbami, EA and Akpo fields.
The militants also said they would target the Nigerian oil company, Brittania-U.
Meanwhile, the Nigeria’s March loading plans, which emerged on Friday, showed a slight dip on a barrel-per-day basis compared with February.
Trading was limited as the market sorted through the new plans, but Angola’s Sonangol had moved at least one cargo.
Trading had not yet begun on most of the cargoes as the owners sorted through their allocations, traders said.
For Nigeria, around 10 million barrels were left available from the February programme, with some cargoes moving into tenders and others quietly trading on a spot basis.
The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation raised slightly the February official selling prices for Bonny Light and Qua Iboe dated Brent plus 86 cents and 92 cents per barrel, respectively.
Angola’s Sonangol had allocated 11 cargoes from its March export plan and sold one on a spot basis, traders said.
The spot sale was not immediately clear, but one trader said it was a cargo of Girassol.
The company was offering four other cargoes on a spot basis, three Dalia at 8 cent discounts to dated Brent and one Saturno at a 90 cent discount.
