There are indications that Nigeria’s oil exports are expected to fall in July to just 1.43 million barrels per day (bpd), loading plans showed, the lowest level so far this year.

This is coming at a time Morocco and Nigeria signed a joint declaration in Rabat, laying out the next steps for the completion of a gas pipeline deal that will be built onshore and offshore.

The export plan comprised 48 cargoes, compared with 60 cargoes and a daily rate of 1.796 million bpd in June, due, in part, to an outage on the Bonny Light stream, which has been under force majeure for a month.

July’s export plan also includes four cargoes of Akpo condensate with 123,000 bpd, compared with four cargoes in June with 133,000 bpd.

The export plans showed one extra cargo of Agbami than in June, as well as one more Bonga and an extra Qua Iboe.

It also shows three fewer Forcados and one fewer Escravos. A number of smaller streams showed no cargoes would load in July.

Nigerian oil export plans are prone to revisions and delays, with cargoes frequently pushed from one month to the next.

Meanwhile, Morocco and Nigeria last Sunday signed a joint declaration in Rabat, laying out the next steps for the completion of a gas pipeline deal that will be built onshore and offshore.

The two countries agreed to the pipeline in December 2016 and launched feasibility studies, ending with a plan to build the pipeline onshore and offshore.

“For economic, political, legal and security reasons, the choice was made on a combined onshore and offshore route,”  Morocco’s National Office of Hydrocarbons and Mines (ONHYM) and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), the two authorities supervising the project said in the joint declaration.

“The pipeline will be 5,660 kilometres (3,516.96 miles) long and its CAPEX has been defined,”  the declaration said, adding that construction will be in phases covering 25 years.

As a next step, Morocco and Nigeria will launch a front-end engineering design (Feed) to involve countries that will be crossed by the pipeline in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and to determine the amount of gas available for export to European off-takers.

This phase also provides for assessing the financial cost and seeking funding from development banks, the joint declaration said.