Nigeria’s daily oil production shrank by 160,000 barrels per day in the second quarter of 2024.
This was contained in a report released by the National Bureau of Statistics.
Within these three months, the NBS stated that the country recorded an average daily production of 1.41 million barrels per day.
This is lower than the first quarter’s production volume of 1.57mbpd.
However, it is higher than the daily average production of 1.22 mbpd recorded in the same quarter of 2023 by 190,000 barrels.
“The nation in the second quarter of 2024 recorded an average daily oil production of 1.41 million barrels per day, higher than the daily average production of 1.22mbpd recorded in the same quarter of 2023 by 0.19mbpd and lower than the first quarter of 2024 production volume of 1.57 mbpd by 0.16mbpd,” the NBS report disclosed.
The nation’s oil output has continued to dwindle since 2020, when production fell from close to 2mbpd to 1.6mbpd.
Between 2018 and 2019, daily oil output quarterly averaged 2 million barrels.
In the second quarter of 2020, the output dropped to 1.81mbpd, followed by 1.67mbpd in the third quarter.
The slope has since continued to fall until it dipped to 1.2mbpd in Q2 2022.
Since then, the efforts of the government to ramp up production have not yielded the desired result, especially in the face of unrelenting oil thieves and vandals.
As a result, Nigeria has not been able to meet the 1.5mbpd quota allocated to it by the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.
Lately, the Federal Government said efforts were ongoing to ramp up oil production to 2 million barrels daily.
The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources (Oil), Heineken Lokpobiri, disclosed that Nigeria must return to 2 million barrels to have enough feedstock for Dangote and other local refineries.
Meanwhile, the NBS added that the real growth of the oil sector was 10.15 per cent (year-on-year) in Q2 2024, indicating an increase of 23.58 percentage points relative to the rate recorded in the corresponding quarter of 2023 (-13.43 per cent).
It was said that growth increased by 4.45 percentage points when compared to Q1 2024, which was 5.70 per cent.
On a quarter-on-quarter basis, the oil sector recorded a growth rate of -10.51 per cent in Q2 2024.
The oil sector contributed 5.70 per cent to the total real Gross Domestic Product in Q2 2024, up from the figure recorded in the corresponding period of 2023 and down from the preceding quarter, where it contributed 5.34 per cent and 6.38 per cent, respectively.
The report indicated that the electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply sector recorded a year-on-year growth of 7.65 per cent in the period under review, representing 33.96 percentage points lower than the 41.61 per cent growth rate recorded in the corresponding quarter of 2023, and 10.30 per cent points lower than the growth rate of 17.95 per cent recorded in the quarter before.
Quarter–on-quarter, the sector recorded a growth rate of 297.61 per cent in Q2 2024.
“The contribution of electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply to nominal GDP in the second quarter of 2024 was 1.56 per cent, lower than the contribution made in the corresponding quarter of 2023 at 1.70 per cent and higher than its contribution of 0.41 per cent in the quarter before.
In real terms, the sector grew by 5.96 per cent in Q2 2024, a decrease from the growth rate of 6.10 per cent recorded in the same quarter of 2023. When compared to the immediate past quarter, there was an increase of 11.39 percentage points from -5.43 per cent recorded. On a quarter-on-quarter, the sector grew at a rate of 294.08 per cent.
“The contribution of this sector to real GDP in the second quarter of 2024 was 0.73 per cent, higher than the 0.71 per cent recorded in Q2 2023 and higher than the 0.19% recorded in Q1 2024,” the NBS disclosed.
