Nigeria lost around 500,000 barrels per day (bpd) of oil production due to severe flooding in recent weeks but output is now back to normal, an oil industry regulator told Reuters on Wednesday.
Nigeria’s oil is exported to the United States, Asia and Europe and supply disruptions can affect world prices because it is priced against the Brent oil benchmark.
The country has experienced its worst flooding in five decades this year. The Niger River burst its banks last month, submerging stretches of the swampy oil-rich region in flood waters.
“It was as a result of the recent flooding. Around 500,000 bpd was shut down for a two to three week period but things are back to normal now,” a spokesman for the Department of Petroleum Resources said by phone.
Shell said its Nigerian venture had declared force majeure on exports of the Bonny and Forcados crudes on Friday, citing damage caused by thieves and flooding affecting a third-party supplier it did not identify.
Bonny Light and Forcados are two of Nigeria’s most important oil grades and in October accounted for 427,000 bpd, about a fifth of the country’s total exports of 2.048 million bpd.
On September 30, Shell said its Nigerian unit closed the Bonny pipeline which sends crude to the Bonny terminal and stopped 150,000 bpd of production after oil thieves caused a fire.
Separately, French oil company Total on Tuesday told Reuters it had stopped oil and gas production from its onshore OML 58 block due to flooding.
The block, in which Total has a 40 percent stake, normally produces the equivalent of 90,000 bpd of oil.
