(Ecofin Agency) - The United States’ crude oil import from Nigeria and Angola has risen from the 190,000 bpd recorded in Q1 of 2015 to 354,000 bpd in Q1 of 2016, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) revealed in its June edition of the oil and gas report.

The import destination report of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) revealed that U.S imported about 949,361 barrels in January, 1,943,006 in February and 3,970,465 in March 2016. This is more than the 1.9 million barrels which it imported from Nigeria in January and February 2015.

According to OPEC, Nigeria’s crude oil production dropped from the 1.6 million bpd recorded in April to 1.4 million bpd in May 2016. This represents a shortfall of 251,500 bpd during the period, The Guardian reports.“In the first quarter 2016, the combined average imported US crudes from the two main West Africa crude exporters – Nigeria and Angola – jumped to 354 tbpd from about 190 tbpd in 2015. The arbitrage economics also worked with several other Atlantic Basin crudes – even sour grades such as Urals – that have not been feasible for years due to the growing Canadian heavy crude exports to the US and the wide Brent-WTI spread,” it said.

It added that Africa’s oil supply is expected to witness a further reduction of 60, 000 bpd in 2016, revised down by 29,000 bpd to average 2.31 million bpd caused by the production outages in Ghana.“Amid unresolved technical issues at Tullow’s FPSO vessel in the giant Jubilee oilfield offshore Ghana, production is back online, but output is less than half of what it should be, while investors have been told they won’t see any dividends this year. Production resumed on 4 May, but the repair of a turret could take up to a year, according to the media. Right now, the company is working to ramp up production to above 30,000 bpd, but this is well under the originally anticipated 100,000 bpd. It was producing 103,000 b/d the previous year,” it added.

Anita Fatunji