Nigeria, Angola cut oil export programmes to meet OPEC deal

African oil producers Nigeria and Angola have revised down their crude oil export programmes for May and June to align themselves with a global production cut deal led by OPEC, loading programmes showed.

The Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies, OPEC +, agreed to cut their combined output by 9.7 million barrels per day (bpd), or 23% each in May and June, from an agreed baseline.

The deal was agreed earlier this month to support prices as demand has plunged by as much as a third due to global lockdowns to contain the spread of the coronavirus.

Angola’s May programme was revised down to 41 cargoes, or 1.27 million barrels per day (bpd), from 45 cargoes initially published in its preliminary schedule. This translates to a production cut of around 10% versus its pre-deal March volume.

The final June schedule was reduced to 39 cargoes or 1.25 million bpd.

The emergence of Nigeria’s June loading programmes was severely delayed due to wrangling between producers and state firm NNPC on how cuts should be implemented.

The schedules, issued by the operators, have been slowly trickling out. Those grades run by Exxon Mobil were the first to emerge showing some steep cuts.

Still missing are the schedules for key grades sent out by Royal Dutch Shell that has the largest footprint in the country.

Exxon operates one of Nigeria’s key grades, Qua Iboe, which has seen planned exports slashed in June to 95,000 bpd compared with an original May programme of 215,000 bpd.

In addition, two May cargoes of Qua Iboe have been deferred to June.

The U.S. major also operates several smaller offshore fields in Nigeria - Erha, Yoho and Usan. May cargoes for the three grades have been rolled into the following month and only Yoho has a dedicated June schedule of one 350,000 barrel cargo.

In Equatorial Guinea, Exxon has also just deferred two Zafiro cargoes instead of providing a June programme.

Chevron’s Nigerian grade Agbami will load fewer cargoes in June at four cargoes versus five cargoes in the previous two months. One May cargo has been deferred to June.

On Wednesday, schedules for Total’s Nigerian Egina and Amenam grades also showed declines.