NUPRC: Oil Production In November Rose From 14.6% To 1.41 Million Barrels Per Day

The Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) has revealed that Nigeria's daily oil output increased 14.63 percent in the month of November 2023 to 1.414 million barrels from 1.23 million barrels recorded in October.

Based on the Commission's estimates from yesterday, the number includes 228,489 barrels of both blended and unblended condensate oil.

The actual crude oil production volume of 1.18 million barrels per day however remains significantly short of Nigeria’s quota of 1.8 million daily sets by the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, (OPEC).

Condensate oil is not part of Nigeria’s OPEC quota.

Due to significant oil theft and pipeline damage, the nation has had difficulty meeting its production targets.

Speaking about the scenario, Chief Timipre Sylva, the Minister of State Petroleum Resources, expressed confidence that the nation's production will reach 1.8 million barrels per day by the end of May 2023.

The Minister promised that the government would keep up its efforts to tighten security along the routes of the main crude oil pipelines and to stop any leaks that oil thieves and pipeline vandals might use to steal crude oil.

He explained that the inability of Nigeria to meet the current OPEC quota is not due to lack of production capacity on the part of crude oil producers “but because a lot of producers decided not to inject into the pipelines because they were losing a lot of their productions when they inject into the pipelines”.

He continued: “Once we are able to build enough confidence in the security of the pipelines, they (producers) will then be able to inject into the pipelines once again and once that happens, we will be able to meet up with our OPEC quotas.

"That is where we are going and the early signals are there that we are making very good progress.

“Our pipelines have issues and we put security structures in place involving the communities, the security, oil companies and government and we are beginning to see some early signs of improvement.

"Our production for example has improved from where we were in the past.

“We are producing over a million barrels now and we believe that when we have built confidence enough on the pipelines and all the producers begin to inject into the pipelines that have been secured, we will be able to produce quickly to meet our OPEC quota.

"That’s really our plan and I am hoping that before the exit of this administration, we should be able to meet our OPEC quota."