LAGOS — Royal Dutch Shell said, yesterday, it has been forced to shut in its Nigerian Bonny Light crude exports to repair pipeline damage caused by a recent spate of hacksaw attacks.

Trade sources said the entire Bonny Light programme had been withdrawn following the force majeure. The nation’s crude loading programme showed the export volume of Bonny Light crude was to average 190,000 barrels per day (bpd) in September and 216,000 bpd in October.

Crude oil exports are expected to decline in October, according to provisional loading programmes, yesterday, potentially supporting values. Further support could come from Royal Dutch Shell’s declaration of a force majeure on Bonny Light crude.

The country will export around 1.85 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil in October, provisional loading programmes provided by trade sources showed declining for a second month from a 5 1/2-year high.

Bonny Light/Qua Iboe are said to have no October cargoes yet being offered openly for October, traders said. Offers were expected to come in at dated Brent plus $3.00 per barrel or higher.

In the case of Escravos crude trade, sources said there was talk of good demand for the grade with one or more October cargoes already thought sold to Petral The trading unit of Indonesian state-run energy firm Pertamina, has issued a tender to buy sweet crude for October and November delivery, traders said.

The tender will close on August 25 with offers valid until a day later. Taiwan’s CPC Corp is said to issue two tenders to buy sweet crude for November delivery. The tender closed yesterday with validity open until tomorrow. CPC also tendered to buy condensate. Last month, CPC bought at least 2 million.

Crude oil traders said Nigeria’s total exports would fall from planned export volume of about two million bpd in September and 1.85 million bpd in October.

Meanwhile Shell said in a statement that it has declared force majeure on Bonny Light exports until October, just 6 weeks after its export was normalised after the previous repair work.

“The declaration which came into effect yesterday is due to production deferment from several pipeline incidents in Eastern operations,” the oil major said in the statement. In one instance, SPDC recorded six separate oil spill incidents on the Okordia – Rumuekpe trunk line at Ikarama in Bayelsa State, between August 2 and 15 this year, all from hacksaw cuts by unknown persons,” it said.

“On August 21, another three hacksaw cuts were reported on the nearby Adibawa delivery line. Some production is shut in while SPDC repairs the line.”Shell, which operates the Bonny terminal declined to specify the shut in volume. In general, force majeure frees an operator from contract obligations.

Shell is the operator of the Bonny terminal and the oil is produced from Shell and Chevron concessions. Nigeria produces mostly light sweet crude, which is widely exported to North and South America, Asia and Europe. Bonny Light is one of the county’s key crude streams. Replacement demand for Nigerian crude has risen since the disruption of oil exports from war-torn Libya. But Shell and Bonny Light has been hit by recent setbacks.

Shell lifted the previous force majeure on Bonny Light in mid-July, following the repair work to the pipeline damage caused by similar hacksaw attacks in June. Earlier in August, Shell’s Gannet Alpha oil platform spilled oil into the North Sea.