LONDON: Nigeria is due to export around 1.88 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil in December, excluding the Forcados and Pennington grades, provisional loading programmes showed on Wednesday.
That would be down from 2.12 million bpd planned in November. But the export schedule of Forcados crude has yet to be released because of a force majeure on loadings declared by its operator, Royal Dutch Shell.
Nigeria has lost at least a fifth of its oil output lately due to flooding and oil theft, government officials said on Wednesday.
The loss is supporting prices because Nigerian crude is priced in relation to the Brent benchmark.
Still, should Forcados output be back to the normal rate of around 230,000 bpd in December, Nigeria's total crude exports in December would average close to November's, which was a six-month high.
So far, a total of 69 full or part-cargoes of crude will load in December, the schedules show, down from 72 in November.
Typically, one cargo of Pennington is exported each month, potentially adding about another 30,000 bpd to the total.
A trade source said there was a possibility of a 14th shipment of Qua Iboe, Nigeria's largest crude stream, being added to the schedule at a later stage, further boosting supply.
At present, there are 13 cargoes of Qua Iboe due for export in December, or 398,000 bpd.
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