Nigeria oil minister sees EA field back in days

[Richard Akindele]

ABUJA (Reuters) - Nigeria's oil minister said on Monday that Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L: Quote, Profile, Research) would resume output at an oilfield offshore Nigeria within days, restoring a fifth of the supply shut down in Africa's largest producer.

Shell closed the offshore EA field, which normally pumps about 115,000 barrels of oil per day, in January after militants kidnapped four workers. After resuming partial output, Shell closed the field again in February after an upsurge of violence.

"EA should come back almost immediately because it was preemptively shut. That is in a matter of days," Nigerian Minister of State for Petroleum Edmund Daukoru said in Abuja.

But there was no sign of Shell's more important 340,000 bpd of onshore Forcados production in Nigeria restarting.

The supply cuts in Nigeria, the world's eighth largest oil exporter, helped crude prices jump to almost $68 a barrel in New York on Monday, within sight of the all-time high of $70.85 hit last year when hurricanes damaged Gulf of Mexico supply.

In the past, Daukoru has sometimes predicted that shut oil facilities would restart only for the fields to remain closed.

Daukoru said he spoke to the managing director of Shell in Nigeria a few days ago, and "he assured me that EA is coming back like that."

A Shell spokeswoman in London had no comment on when the field would come back online, saying 455,000 bpd of the output of the company's Nigerian venture remained shut.

"We've always said, when it's safe to do so," Shell spokeswoman Caroline Wittgen said. "There's nothing in terms of timing I can say."

SUPPLY LOSS

Daily production of 550,000 bpd remains closed in Nigeria, Daukoru confirmed. That was 23 percent of the 2.38 million bpd Nigeria pumped in February, according to a Reuters survey.

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