Nigeria’s daily crude oil production is expected to rise as the Nigerian Agip Exploration Limited (NAE) starts work on Zabazaba deep water project, which is expected to gulp $13.5b. Agip will start taking in commercial proposals for the project this month, All Africa reported.

The Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB) and NAE are calling for commercial tenders from bidders after the completion of the technical evaluation for the main packages of the project with the aim to boost local content.

The packages cover the floating, production, storage and offloading (FPSO) units, subsea, installation and rigs, The Guardian informed.

The Executive Secretary of Nigerian Content Development Monitoring Board (NCDMB), Simbi Wabote, noted that the board fast-tracked its evaluations and approvals on the Zabazaba project to increase Nigeria’s crude oil production and create opportunities for the growth and development of Nigerian content.

The project is expected to develop oil and gas reserves in the range of 560m barrels of oil equivalent.

According to NAE’s project plans; the Zabazaba field will be developed first and will be followed by the Etan field three years later to be tied back to the Zabazaba FPSO from where the produced hydrocarbons will be processed and exported.