On 8 October 2025, off the Bonny export corridor in Nigeria’s Niger Delta, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC), Sahara Group, Eroton E&P and Bilton Energy commissioned the FSO Cawthorne; a Floating Storage and Offloading vessel, able to hold 2.2 million barrels of crude. The partners say the new unit will solve chronic evacuation bottlenecks from Oil Mining Lease 18 (OML 18) and nearby fields by enabling direct offshore loading, with a stated goal of stabilising output at 50,000 barrels per day in 2025 and improving Nigeria’s export reliability. It is described as Nigeria’s first wholly Nigerian-owned FSO and the country’s first crude oil terminal to be commissioned in half a century.
At OML 18’s 50,000-barrel-per-day target, the Cawthorne’s 2.2 million barrels of storage equate to roughly forty-four days of production, a buffer that allows wells to keep flowing even when export tankers are delayed or riverine channels silt up. Put another way, the single unit can hold about 1.7 days of Nigeria’s average daily crude output in 2024, which the regulator recorded at around 1.32 million barrels per day, excluding condensates. In a system where onshore pipelines and shallow-water jetties often determine whether barrels reach market at all, that buffer is the difference between sustained cash flow and forced shut-ins.
The location is not incidental. By stationing the FSO near Bonny, operators can bypass fragile onshore infrastructure that has been a magnet for theft, vandalism and spills. Nigeria’s authorities have claimed substantial progress against theft in 2025, but the recent past is unambiguous: the country lost 13.5 million barrels to theft and sabotage in 2023–2024, about 18,000 barrels per day on average, an economic hole valued by Nigeria’s EITI chapter at roughly $3.3 billion. Even with stepped-up security, any solution that reduces the number of vulnerable valves, manifolds and river crossings between a wellhead and an export tanker lowers both leakage risk and the cost of guarding it.
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Spills in the Niger Delta have fallen from the shocking highs of the last decade, yet Nigeria still recorded at least 589 spill incidents in 2024, according to data mined from the national Oil Spill Monitor. Each spill means contaminated creeks, damaged mangroves and disrupted fisheries. A shift from long, attack-prone pipelines to offshore storage and ship-to-ship loading does not eliminate environmental risk, FSOs themselves demand rigorous integrity management, but it moves a chunk of the hazard away from dense river communities and shortens the chain of custody.
There is a climate dimension as well. Nigeria’s upstream system has been flaring about 7–8% of produced gas in recent years. The regulator’s 2024 annual report put flaring at 7.64% of total gas produced, and by July 2025 it reported a month with flaring down to 7.16% even as gas output averaged 7.6 billion standard cubic feet per day. Efficient evacuation helps on this front: when operators are forced to throttle or cycle wells while waiting for barges, flaring can rise; when evacuation is regular, facilities run closer to design conditions and waste, and emissions, can fall. Globally, flaring volumes rose again in 2023 and 2024, so the onus on large African producers to show operational discipline is increasing, not easing.
The Cawthorne also lands in an African upstream that is tilting steadily offshore. Senegal reached first oil in mid-2024 at the Sangomar field using the Léopold Sédar Senghor FPSO, designed to process 100,000 barrels per day and store 1.3 million barrels; Ghana’s Jubilee hub continues to be anchored by the Kwame Nkrumah FPSO, a workhorse with processing capacity above 120,000 barrels per day. These floating systems, some that produce (FPSOs) and some that store and offload (FSOs), have become the core architecture for West Africa’s Atlantic margin, where deep water and security realities make heavy onshore infrastructure both costly and risky. Nigeria’s decision to field a Nigerian-owned FSO therefore aligns it with the region’s most resilient export designs while building local ownership of critical hardware.
Still, sustainability is not merely about molecules moved; it is also about governance. As international majors sell down onshore portfolios, local operators are inheriting legacy issues alongside the barrels. Communities and investors are watching to see whether domestic owners will run cleaner operations than their predecessors and whether regulators can enforce remediation obligations. A modern, double-hull FSO converted from a VLCC and staffed to international standards is a step toward safer operations, but the true test will be transparent spill reporting, credible measurement at the terminal, and sustained investment in community relations in Rivers and Bayelsa states, the human geography surrounding OML 18’s wells.
For Nigeria’s macroeconomy, the calculus is straightforward. The NUPRC counted total 2024 liquids production at about 1.58 million barrels per day (crude plus condensate), below targets but improving as security operations bite. Every barrel exported reliably strengthens a foreign-exchange position that remains tight and gives Abuja fiscal breathing room for the energy transition at home. If the Cawthorne helps Nigeria keep OML 18’s barrels flowing through seasonal siltation and episodic security flare-ups, it will have paid for itself quickly in avoided losses and steadier cargo programmes. The vessel is a reminder that sustainable practice in hydrocarbons is not a contradiction: it is a requirement. Cleaner operations, accurate metering, lower flaring and fewer spills are the floor on which credible transition plans are built.
The FSO Cawthorne is a piece of export plumbing whose purpose is workmanlike: hold oil, load ships, keep wells onstream. However, in a region where the practicalities of moving crude often decide whether schools are funded and clinics are stocked, that kind of infrastructure is consequential. If Nigerian partners manage it well, the result will be fewer shut-ins, fewer leaks in creeks, and more predictable cash to fund the long, expensive shift to gas-to-power, renewables and industrial efficiency that Africa needs. That is a sustainability story worth tracking from the deck plates up.
