Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.A) today said that it entered into an agreement with Italy-based Saipem S.p.A for the provision of few production facilities at one of its offshore projects in Nigeria. The agreement includes the provision of subsea crude oil flowlines and the installation of other facilities at Shell’s Bonga North-West offshore project. 

The Bonga project is located 120 kilometers off the shore of Nigeria and has a capacity of 200,000 barrels of crude and 150 million cubic feet of gas a day. The subsea flowlines will help the company to transport crude oil from this project to its existing production, storage and offloading facilities. Shell operates the Bonga fields on behalf of the state-owned Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation under a production-sharing contract. 

In terms of assets, Royal Dutch Shell owns a strong and diversified portfolio of global energy businesses that offers attractive long-term growth opportunities. The company is actively managing and repositioning this portfolio by divesting non-core assets and stepping up capital expenditures to produce organic growth. 

Following the disruption of operations in 2008, we believe that the operating environment in Nigeria is clearing up. The new contract agreement is evidence in this direction. 

Apart from the Bonga field, the start-up of volumes from a number of other projects in offshore Nigeria such as Erha and Bosi should produce upstream growth in the long run.
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