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Nigeria’s Agbami oil   field in the last quarter of 2008 helped lift the production level of Chevron Corporation. Its international liquids production, for instance, increased roughly by 10 percent, primarily as a result of the completion of the expansion project and yearly turnaround activities at Tengiz Field in Kazakhstan, along with the continued ramp-up of production at the Agbami Field offshore Nigeria. 
Despite this push, the company’s earnings for the fourth quarter 2008 were expected to be significantly lower than in the 2008 third quarter. This indicates that most of the decline is associated with lower prices of crude oil and natural gas that negatively affect earnings for the upstream business, according to the company.
The loading of Agbami crude oil started at the last quarter of last year. Chevron Nigeria, its operator, said in late July that Agbami oilfield was producing about 20,000 barrels of oil and natural gas liquids a day, and production was expected to increase to about 250,000 bpd by the end of 2009. 
Agbami project’s first oil was supposed to have come on stream in 2007, but for some delays. 
Peak oil production will be 250,000 barrels per day (b/d), while the field has about 1 billion barrels of recoverable oil. 
The field is located about 70 miles off Nigeria’s coast and covers 45,000 acres of land, with a large FPSO vessel. 
Approximately, one-third of Agbami lies in the adjacent Block OPL 217, where Statoil (54 percent) is the operator and ChevronTexaco (46 percent) is its partner. A unitisation formula for the whole of the Abgami reservoir was worked out to take into account the interests of the two OPL 217 partners. 
Texaco Nigeria Outer Shelf (part of ChevronTexaco) has a stake in Statoil’s adjacent OPL 218, where the Norwegian operator has found the big Nnwa gas field. 
This and Shell’s Doro gas field will be developed jointly for a floating LNG/GTL export plant, and with the field coming on stream, the country’s  production level will receive a big boost.  
According to the company, US crude oil realisations for the first two months of the fourth quarter declined about $50 per barrel to $61.70. International liquids unit realisations of $53.29 per barrel for the two-month period were also approximately $50 per barrel lower. Crude-oil realisations worldwide in December 2008 are expected to be significantly lower than the average for October and November. 
US natural gas realisations decreased $3.66 to $4.98 per thousand cubic feet during the first two months of the fourth quarter, while average international natural gas realisations were off slightly to $5.30 per thousand cubic feet.