The Nigerian National Petroleum Limited and its Joint Venture Partner, Newscross Exploration and Production, have restarted operations at the Awoba Unit Field with a target of 12,000 million barrels per day after two years of shutdown over crude oil theft.
The Chief Corporate Communications Officer, Olufemi Soneye, disclosed this in a statement on Tuesday.
According to him, the oil field restarted operation since the restart on April 13, 2024, averaging 8,000 barrels per day, and production is expected to ramp up to 12,000 barrels per day within the next 30 days.
The Awoba Unit straddles OMLs 18 and 24 in the mangrove swamp south of Port Harcourt, Rivers State. Both OML 18 and OML 24 assets are under the NNPC Upstream Investment Management Services, NUIMS, management.
“Besides the recent start of production at the Madu Field by the NNPC Ltd/First E&P JV, the company has achieved the restart of production at OMLs 29 and OML 18 in late 2023, which have steadily contributed an average of 60,000bpd to the nation’s production output since their restart,” the statement added.
Commenting on the achievement, NNPC Ltd.’s Group Chief Executive Officer, Mele Kyari, attributed the success to the enabling operating environment provided by the Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration.
“He expressed appreciation to all stakeholders (staff, operators, host communities, government security agencies, and private security contractors) who played a pivotal role in achieving the feat,” it said.
The development comes barely four days after NNPCL announced the commencement of crude oil production in the Madu oilfield.
The government had vowed to ramp up daily crude oil production to 1.65mbpd.
