Nigeria’s oil production drops to 1.25mbpd, says OPEC

Nigeria’s daily oil production dipped further to 1.25 million barrels per day in May, a report by the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries has said.

This is despite the claim by the Federal Government and the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited that the country’s oil production has risen to 1.7mbpd.

OPEC data showed that Nigeria lost 30,000bpd as crude production dropped from 1.28mbpd in April to 1.25mpd in April.

Recently in May, the NNPC Group Chief Executive Officer, Mele Kyari, stated that crude production was nearing 1.7mbpd at the time

Kyari, who spoke during a stakeholders engagement between the Nigerian Association of Petroleum Explorationists and the NNPCL held in Lagos, said,  “As of today’s data, we’re inching to 1.7mbpd. We won’t celebrate this. On 17th of April 2020, our production, without doing anything, without drilling new wells, shot to 2.2mbpd. The difference was COVID-19. The thieves, the vandals, everybody went to sleep.”

But in its Monthly Oil Market Oil Report for May 2024, OPEC said it gathered from direct communication with the OPEC member country that Nigeria’s oil production had further gone down, though the figure stood at 1.42mbpd from data gathered from secondary sources.

The PUNCH reported earlier that Nigeria’s dwindling daily oil production turned the corner in April, rising marginally from 1.23 million barrels per day in March to 1.28mbpd, according to OPEC.

OPEC said Nigeria’s oil production added 50,000 barrels daily in April after it fell in recent times.

The nation’s crude production fell from 1.32 million barrels per day in February to 1.23 million barrels per day in March.

Production dropped from 1.427mbpd in January to 1.322mbpd, according to direct sources.

The continuous drop in production came amid stakeholders’ concerns over the loss of revenue due to the failure of the government to ramp up production.

Recently, the Chairman of the Petroleum Technology Association of Nigeria, Wole Ogunsanya, said the country was losing a lot of revenue daily due to its inability to tackle dwindling oil production.

According to Ogunsanya, if Nigeria could retain between 60 and 70 per cent of the oil and gas value chain in the country, it stands a better chance of being among the top 20 economies in the world.

He pointed out that the country was underproducing to the tune of at least 500,000 barrels per day, which was a huge loss to the country.