Nigeria to add 500,000 b/d oil output capacity by Q1 2006:Daukoru

Johannesburg (Platts)--28Sep2005

Nigeria is on track to add around 500,000 b/d to its crude production
capacity by the first quarter of next year, the country's oil minister Edmund
Daukoru said Wednesday.

     Projects contributing to the expected capacity increase include Shell's
Bonga field, Eni's Abo and ExxonMobil's Erha, for which the Floating
Production, Storage and Offloading vessel has already set sail from Singapore,
Daukoru said on the sidelines of the World Petroleum Congress in Johannesburg.
     A number of smaller projects are also due to come on stream in the coming
months and make up part of the overall capacity increase, he said.

     OPEC member Nigeria expects to increase its output "significantly" by the
end of this decade, the minister said, and is on course to meet its target
output levels of 4-mil b/d in 2010.

     Nigeria, Africa's largest producer, pumped an average of 2.45-mil b/d of
crude in August, according to a Platts survey of OPEC and industry officials
earlier this month.

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