ENI: Force majeire declared for Brass crude

ENI has declared a force majeure on Nigeria’s Brass River grade of crude oil, a trader said on Friday, once again throwing a spotlight onto the unreliability of exports from a country plagued by oil theft.

The trader said the force majeure was declared after a fire on a pipeline.

Eni did not immediately respond to a request for confirmation of the outage.

The force majeure on Brass River adds to one from Shell on the Forcados BFO-FOC grade of crude oil that is still in place, meaning output for June is likely to be low. The June export programme was expected to start emerging next week.

Repair work on the pipeline feeding Nigeria’s Forcados crude oil to the export terminal is expected to last till June, sources familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.

Nigeria’s June export programme is set to come to market from early next week.

Around 142,000 barrels per day of Brass River was due to be exported in May according to a loading programme seen by Reuters.