Nigeria’s oil production surpasses 1mbpd, FG battles theft

Nigeria’s crude oil production rose above one million barrels per day for the first time since July this year, figures released by the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission on Thursday showed.

Oil production in Nigeria kept crashing since last year due to massive theft in the Niger Delta, leading to humongous financial losses for the country and the exit of some international oil companies.

It crashed below one million barrels per day in August and September 2022, which were the worst oil production outputs from Nigeria in years.

But in its latest crude oil and condensate production data for October 2022, the upstream regulator stated that the country’s oil production averaged 1,014,485 barrels per day last month.

This indicated an increase of more than 8.18 per cent when compared to what was produced in September 2022, which was 937,766 million barrels per day.

The NUPRC and the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited had repeatedly stated that efforts were being made to curtail oil theft and ramp up Nigeria’s output of crude.

The Chief Executive, NUPRC, Gbenga Komolafe, recently told journalists in Abuja that the commission was targeting to add about 500,000 barrels of crude oil to Nigeria’s production by getting about 50 per cent of the commodity that was shut-in due to theft.

However, the latest rise in Nigeria’s oil production output was still less than the 1.8 million barrels per day quota approved for the country by the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

Nigeria has consistently failed to meet its OPEC quota, no thanks to the prolonged deep-rooted oil theft in the oil sector.

However, the increase in output last month indicated that the reinforced fight against oil thieves by security agencies is gradually yielding results, as industry observers prayed that it be effectively sustained.