Shell needs a month to bring back Nigeria oil output

ABUJA, Nigeria — Nigeria’s Oil Minister Edmund Daukoru said Monday Royal Dutch Shell PLC has told him it will take around a month to bring back most of the country’s shut-in oil production.

Daukoru, who is also the president of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, told Dow Jones Newswires in an interview: “We expect most of it back within a month. Shell told me last week that they needed about month before they can get most of their production back.”

He said around 27% of Nigeria’s output had been knocked out by ethnic rebel attacks in the Niger Delta region.

Attacks by the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta have cut the country’s crude oil production by more than a quarter, or 641,000 barrels a day, out of some 2.4 million b/d of production.

Almost half of the country’s daily output comes from Shell-run operations and it is the fifth-largest exporter of crude to the U.S.

MarketWatch