NEW YORK, March 29: The US foreign cash crude market was steady on Friday as Opec raised production while civil strife continued to affect exports in Nigeria, traders said.

Nigerian Forcados cargoes for April lifting are being delayed by up to a month because of ethnic violence in the west Niger Delta, traders said on Friday.

One trader with a cargo originally scheduled to load April 16-17 said the stem had first been delayed until the end of April and was now scheduled to load May 14-15.

Another trader said cargoes were delayed by anything from just over a week to nearly a month, adding: I would be very surprised if there was a May program for Forcados.

Royal Dutch/Shell said on Thursday it had declared a secondary force majeure on export loadings from its Forcados terminal, extending oil export delays by 10 days from already anticipated delays of three to 14 days.

Shell has said some 320,000 bpd of Forcados production has been shut in of the stream’s 500,000 bpd capacity.

But industry sources say Forcados production is running at only around 140,000 barrels per day (bpd).

Bonny Light loading is virtually back to normal, dealers said, with production running at normal rates above 500,000 bpd, after Shell increased production in areas untouched by the ethnic violence.

Shell has also ramped up production from its new offshore EA field to around 65,000 bpd, industry sources say.

ChevronTexaco operator of Escravos, has given no time scale for delays and all 440,000 bpd of capacity has been shut in.

Opec in March more than compensated for the loss of Iraqi exports and a cutback in Nigerian production after Saudi Arabia raised output sharply, consultancy Petrologistics said in a report on Friday.

Total Opec output, including lower Iraq volumes, rose by 430,000 barrels a day to 28.36 million bpd, the report said.

Output excluding Iraq, for 10 Opec members with quotas, rose by 1.55 million bpd to 26.85 million bpd.

Opec’s biggest producer Saudi Arabia raised supply to 9.56 million bpd, Petrologistics estimated.

NYMEX May crude settled down 21 cents at $30.16 a barrel as Opec assured the market it has ample supplies.

The transatlantic arbitrage or premium of West Texas Intermediate to North Sea Brent widened to about $3.80 a barrel, almost double the $2.00 profit level for shipping transatlantic sweet crude to US shores.—Reuters