Nigeria’s crude oil, displaced by the United States’ shale, is making inroads into the US West Coast.
The shale boom has upended the global market, turning the US from a keen buyer of Nigerian oil to an aggressive competitor.
But no pipelines easily connect the shale hub at the Permian basin, located in Texas and New Mexico, to the West Coast, driving the latter to look to Nigeria to quench its thirst for crude, according to Reuters.
Early this year, Californian refineries began loading Nigerian oil- taking cargoes of Qua Iboe, Bonga, Erha, Forcados and others, according to traders and Refinitiv Eikon data.
The more than six million barrels that the US West Coast imported from Nigeria between April and August this year was almost four times higher than the amount for all of 2018.
Source: Punch Newspaper
